A Sudden Departure

Mackey Chandler

Cover by Sarah Hoyt

Chapter 1

It was late into main shift and April was getting really hungry. Her grandfather called this morning and asked her to have supper with him. She hadn’t done much more than say hello to her Gramps in passing for months, so she didn’t want to turn him down. She’d readily agreed and offered to meet him at the Fox and Hare, her treat, but he declined saying he wanted to talk. She expected him to suggest the cafeteria next, because nobody cared if you chatted there. The club had acts and you could only speak between sets without bothering people.

Instead Gramps surprised her by saying he’d bring dinner to her place. That really made her wonder what he could want to discuss. Even if you needed a bit of privacy the cafeteria was big enough you could move off by the back wall, well away from the coffee pots everyone clustered around. April had conducted some pretty sensitive business discussions there and never had a problem.

Heather was on the moon, Jeff was landing on their floating shuttle base in the Pacific, and she hadn’t made any other arrangements for dinner, so she was happy for the company. Even her bodyguard Gunny was off on a security assignment. She just felt guilty Gramps had to be the one to ask, because she’d been neglecting him. She should have thought of asking him on her own while all her people were away. He wasn’t one to scold you, or be needy. Her mother carried that duty for the family. April still managed to feel guilty.

April was tense and unhappy with Jeff landing on Earth, so a distraction would be good. Their shuttle had been landing on the massive bulk carrier ship they’d converted to a floating shuttle pad with no problems for almost a year now. There had been a little problem with submersibles snooping around the Isle of Hawaiki at first, but that seemed resolved. They finally had a couple robotic freight haulers regularly landing on the Isle too.

Their business partners objected to Jeff risking an Earth trip until now, but they couldn’t deny Jeff landing indefinitely with no problems evident. He was anxious to see everything first hand. Seeing it by teleconference just wasn’t the same, even if you could direct the person with the camera to do close-ups of specific items. Jeff pointed out it was still entirely too easy to hide things from someone in telepresence.

They had three of the six hatch covers on the ship set up for vertical landings, with arresting gear to secure the shuttle landing pads against wind or high seas. Three were as many as they needed right now. Favorable treatment from several Earth countries for landing rights gave them other options. That could disappear in a moment though, and both April and Jeff agreed that they needed to be able to maintain their shipping traffic if the Earthies proved fickle and yanked the rights. Heather hadn’t disagreed, but she was so busy with her own domain on the moon she just nodded and went along with most everything they planned.

April wasn’t clear how her grandfather would regard Jeff going to Earth. Happy, as he was called, had pushed her to be bold when she was younger, even arranging a trip to Earth for her that hadn’t worked out so well. She could hardly object if he thought the same boldness natural for Jeff. Gramps was more likely to feel that way since Jeff was older.

Jeff and her Gramps had collaborated on spaceship designs for some time. But Jeff wasn’t doing that as actively as he used to, design had got ahead of economic need to build and stopped temporarily. Instead her grandpa was working more directly with Dave’s shop that actually did the fabrication for things like the robotic landers. She wondered if he was less interested in that too, now that he didn’t have the companionship of working with Jeff?

April’s previous visit to Hawaii had been so unpleasant she didn’t feel trusting enough to go down again for herself or her partners. Hawaii had seceded from North America since her visit, but she was still uncertain how safe it could be for her. Indeed, her Hawaiian neighbor was on Home at least temporarily because of that uncertainty.

They had managed one vacation together since, to an isolated atoll, but she even doubted the wisdom of that in hindsight. They’d felt comfortable at the time, given Home’s treaty with North America, but she’d seen since how easily they repudiated their agreement. She wouldn’t go down again without a lot more security. There would be no witnesses to what happens on an isolated atoll. All three of them and Barak had been a little foolish, but got away with it.

If she had neglected seeing her grandpa Happy right here on Home, she hadn’t visited her maternal grandparents in Australia at all since she was twelve years old. But she couldn’t feel as guilty about that. No way would she risk doing that at present. The fact they seemed to think she was still twelve didn’t encourage her to do so either. Her Aussie grandparents weren’t entirely alienated, yet, but a visit might just accomplish that once and for all.

The Life Extension Therapy April enjoyed meant she wasn’t visibly aging very much. That had to be a factor in their attitude. Her grandparents’ generation grew up able to judge a person’s age and maturity at a glance. They hadn’t seemed to adjust to the fact that things were different now.

They also seemed to have a problem with Jeff as her boyfriend. Jeff certainly thought so, and her grandpa hinted strongly that was so, saying her grandma made a face when Jeff was mentioned. She couldn’t get an honest discussion about it with her grandpa. He just put the blame for that off on his wife, who was even less willing to tell April her honest feelings.

Happy, her other grandpa, wasn’t so reticent about anything. He wasn’t shy to hold forth at length about a lot of things. She had to admit, his experience made the advice valuable, whether requested or volunteered. She didn’t have to worry what Happy thought of Jeff, because it was obvious he liked him, and would have whether April was involved with him or not.

When April checked the time she was surprised to see her grandfather wasn’t late. Her stomach seemed to be off clock and didn’t agree. She was worried about Jeff but it didn’t seem to curb her appetite at all, if anything the opposite. She decided to put the satellite view on her wall screen instead of the environmental art. It would be easier to have it up and running when he arrived than to ask her Grandpa if he’d mind it running in the background while they ate. Happy might say she was worrying too much. Then she’d feel silly to put it up.

Chen was the main security man for April, Jeff and Heather, and was tied in with some of their allies on several levels. April knew he kept a constant orbital watch on the floating base, the Isle of Hawaiki. She was a full partner entitled to not only interrogate him but to direct him. She gave him a call and it was answered before the second buzz.

“My Lady,” was all he said, even though there was video, to acknowledge she had his attention. He’d started addressing her formally like that some time back, to rib her in a good natured way. He wasn’t a subject of her friend Heather, and April’s title of Peer meant nothing on Home, so Lady had no real meaning. But as time went on he no longer seemed to say it with the same humor.

“Good evening Chen. Would you link my active screen to your overview of the Isle, please? I’d like to watch Dionysus’ Chariot land and satisfy myself Jeff is safe.”

“How deep would you like it layered?” Chen asked.

“Two sets, significant traffic shown, but actual threats color coded differently,” April asked. “I’ll have a blue layer laid on top of yours, so make your marks and icons contrasting.”

“Your weapons board overlaid?” Chen asked, concerned. “Do you have a particular…worry? Or even a gut feeling? I’ve learned to take your instincts seriously.”

“Yeah, our private system will be the overlay,” April admitted. Chen knew of it, and had some idea of its capacity, but she, Heather and Jeff held the only keys. Chen had access to Home’s Militia system, as she did too. But if she used Militia weapons she’d likely have to justify it to the Assembly after the fact. It might be hard to show her private interests were the same as Home’s. Better not to even need to think about that. It could make you hesitate.

The use of the company system however, was strictly between her and her partners, unless it upset somebody enough to call them out after the fact. She’d suggested once allowing Chen, as their hired man, to have immediate access to some of their basic units, kinetic rods and maybe some low yield warheads or jamming devices. Heather had frowned at that, and Jeff said, “Let’s not go there just yet.” So April hadn’t brought it up again.

Chen just looked at her poker-faced, which was his way of reminding her she hadn’t addressed his second question.

“And yes, I have butterflies in the tummy. I don’t like Earthies, I don’t trust them. It’s been months and months since they’ve done something devious and stupid, so I’m feeling like it’s overdue. It’s still bothering me that the temporary committees in North America have never rescinded their spox rejection of the previous government’s treaty with us. Technically, we are at war with them by their own word, without even an official cease fire. I’d be just as happy if Jeff never went inside L1 again. We moved out past the moon for a reason.”

“If it helps assure you, I went around privately, not on com, and reminded everyone from Dave’s maintenance workers to the cargo handlers to be careful not to broadcast that Mr. Singh was taking the next drop to the ship. One has to be balanced about it. Too great a fuss and using visible security can draw attention and defeat your purpose,” Chen insisted.

“And there are too many partners and investors to cut out of the loop. Who all delight in schmoozing with Jeff and pumping him for details, so hiding his trip entirely is pretty much impossible,” April complained.

Chen just cocked his head and shrugged. That was obvious, and little he could do to hush his boss. “The Chariot is armed,” he reminded her.

“Yes, I take some comfort in that. Thank you, Chen. I’m having dinner here at home with my grandfather. If you need to call me don’t hesitate,” April invited.

“If you have the screen running then I’ll simply put a text box on it,” Chen suggested. “That’s less distracting and faster than trying to switch back and forth between voice and visuals.”

““You’re right about that. Flash the screen if you need to alert me,” April requested. Chen took that for a dismissal and disconnected.

April examined the feed Chen sent carefully. The Isle of Hawaiki parked itself off the shipping routes, far from any settled islands or atolls. There wasn’t even any regular air traffic above them. There were some fishing vessels coming and going past from the Antarctic regions, and just a few vessels that would pass south of them that had cleared Cape Horn coming around South America and were headed west for Australia or the Indian Ocean beyond.

World economic conditions right now meant there was lighter traffic everywhere. That was why they got the Isle so cheaply, for actual scrap metal prices. There was one disturbance in the deep water, roiling cold water up, that was probably a submarine, but it had a vector away from their ship and had already cleared its nearest point of passage a thousand kilometers away.

When she keyed her spex the whole screen was overlaid with a mesh of symbols telling her where their rods and warheads orbited. Some were in retrograde orbits. Not many space capable powers wanted to pay the energy premium to put assets in those orbits. But the defensive systems were weighed toward the conventional orbital direction. Some of the defenses were physically pointed toward those threats only, if they were legacy systems. Every month their primary company budgeted a set number of rods and warheads. Their arms got better and cheaper to produce all the time. The newer rods were loaded with cheaper filler for mass instead of solid metal and the guidance electronics were as cheap now as a little kid’s wrist phone or a ring mouse. Jeff insisted the Earth powers would be doing the same – budgeting a continuous buildup – even if they couldn’t feed their people.

The greater cloud of icons had thirty one small diamonds marking it, about half on the other side of the Earth at any moment. Those were the really vital weapons. April held no illusions that the North Americans couldn’t absorb all their rods and small warheads without significant harm. They were simply too big and presented far too many targets. They’d had thirty two of these special warheads last year before North America stole one and tried to disassemble it in Florida.

Jeff’s mother hadn’t supplied them a new allotment since then of the special quantum fluid that was the heart of these fusion devices. She wouldn’t share the process to make it, and usually only provided enough for four warheads at a time. They had other uses for it too, and it might be next year before they got more. With an adjustable yield that ran to nearly 300 megatons, thirty one devices were more than April ever hoped to need. Two had been used on China in previous conflicts, and one the North Americans had unleashed on Pensacola themselves last year, although to hear them complain you’d think it was a case of entrapment by an attractive nuisance.

April decided to not try to show the time lag on the display. It was considerable given they were at L2 beyond the moon, but any action that was shown on her screen would cover half the Pacific and reduce the couple of seconds lag to insignificance. The added shadow layer of future actions and delay stubs on flight paths wouldn’t be significant at that scale, just distracting.

That left the final question. Now that she had everything displayed to her liking, should she leave it up there or take the top layer down before her grandpa got here and saw how concerned she was? In the end, she left it, not wanting the drama up bringing it up, or trying to sneak a peek at it privately in her spex. Her grandpa was awfully smart and figured things like that out pretty quickly if you tried to fool him.

*

Happy said nothing about the display when he came in carrying supper in a thermal carrier. He gave a glance, and didn’t even appear to examine the plot on the screen closely, but April knew him well enough to know better. The old boy had eyes in the back of his head, literally, since he wore high end spex just like April. The real skill was being able to read the rear view and not give it away with odd head movements and eye shifting. He didn’t let on at all that it wasn’t April’s usual herd of zebras or Swiss lake displayed on the screen.

Supper was comfort food, stuffed peppers and mashed potatoes. April had been worried what to talk about, but Happy had a laundry list of stories and events he wanted her to know about. She ate and he was content to get a nod and a smile from her to know she was listening. Somehow, despite doing all the talking, his plate was finally empty, He shoved it away and leaned back.

“The main thing I wanted to tell you this evening is I’ve decided to travel a bit.” Happy finally revealed. “I was starting to slow down just a few years ago. I had little aches and pains and less energy. Now that I’ve had some serious gene mods I feel better and I’m restless. There isn’t much here on M3 I haven’t done. No point in doing it over again.”

That wasn’t what April expected at all. In fact his prolonged story telling had convinced her that there wasn’t going to be any big news from him this evening.

“Travel where?” April asked, honestly mystified. “There isn’t much to see on the moon that isn’t all the same. I hope you aren’t going down to Earth?”

“Oh no,” Happy agreed, and made a face at the idea of visiting Earth. “There are places I’d still like to see on Earth, wilderness mostly. But the politics of getting there won’t let it happen. Maybe in twenty years or fifty it will be safe again. You know I did some deep space work before I helped build M3. I never talked about that, because I wasn’t supposed to, it was all secret at the time. Now, I figure that government and its agencies don’t still exist with any continuity, so it hardly matters if I talk.

“I was also on the second Mars expedition. There’s little glamour in being second, only a few diehard space nuts could name anybody on it. The second expedition was more a resupply run anyway. We didn’t take as many people but a lot more equipment and perishables. Then those that weren’t needed or hadn’t adjusted to the living conditions from the first expedition were transported back home. More went back than came out on the second trip.

“Most of us never got down to the surface, and as I remember only three who actually landed on Mars then lifted back to return to Earth. One was too sick to stay on. Another had mental problems that showed up. He should have never been on the crew in the first place, and they were glad to be rid of him, but that was hushed up. And the third was the first mission commander who didn’t really want to go back, but the USNA and their partners wanted him to do public relations and propaganda pieces. The poor guy never did get back to Mars before he retired.”

“I take it you want to get down to the surface this time?” April asked.

“Oh yeah. That was really hard traveling all that time and distance just to see it from orbit. We got out to do some suit work, that’s why I was along after all, and see Deimos. It wasn’t very exciting but the view of Mars was great. A few guys got down to Phobos, but I didn’t. They said it was pretty much the same as Deimos with a bit more loose crap on the surface, and Mars rushing past so close and fast it felt almost like flying a hypersonic on Earth.”

“You going to pay your own way or did you find some kind of job that will pay your passage for you?” April wondered.

Happy smiled at her. “They still don’t like to sell you a ticket without a job. Technically they’re supposed to, by their charter, but they’re really dead set against tourists. If you demand a standby ticket they still make you pay upfront and then they will bust a gut to find some way to fill the seats up and disappoint you. If you give up and ask a refund they knock thirty percent off if you haven’t waited for three consecutive trip cycles. That’s eighteen months. And full price for a round trip was seventy two ounces of gold last I checked. They pile on air fees and accommodation fees on top of passage if you aren’t an academic or permanent worker.”

“Ounces? Troy ounces, not Solars?” April asked.

“They couldn’t say Solars for political reasons, but a gram is a gram,” Happy assured her. “You can’t pay in any Earth currency unless you have that country sponsoring you.”

“So who is sponsoring you? I can’t see the Assembly getting involved,” April insisted.

“I’ll be a direct hire of a Mars corporation. They want to start bringing in snowballs and eventually rocks. The plan is to use Phobos as a base for a space station, and build up infrastructure on it. They have a plan to keep a small thruster working with waste material to keep it from dropping a little every year too. The stuff they bring in will orbit out further.

“Besides my previously secret work that’s public now, I seem to have gained a good reputation having my name attached to various projects for Jeff. One of the backers of this Mars project was involved with the last snowball capture we did here. Seems he found out I helped train Barak for vacuum work, and was very aware he helped save that mission. So I’ll be spending time on the moons again, as a glorified construction superintendant, although they give it a much better sounding job title, hoping you’ll take that for some of your pay. I’ll have the guy directing snowball and rock retrieval under me. And I’ll be high enough up on the food chain this time to visit the surface at need, and I’ll be the judge of that. I may even go along on some Jupiter missions if I can make a plausible case for it.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if that turned out to be desirable,” April said, with a wink.

“You never know,” Happy agreed innocently. “How can I judge how it’s being run from a distance with the time lag? It’s a matter of safety,” he said with a perfectly straight face.

“Which is pretty much the argument Jeff made for going down to the Isle today. I won’t see you for a long time, years maybe,” April said, sadly.

Happy shrugged. “I haven’t been of much use to you youngsters lately. Most of the projects Jeff and I have done are sitting waiting for funding or for a market to grow. We have a pretty decent rough lay-out of a constant boost vessel designed for the Mars run, but there’s no economic reason to build it yet. Partly due to the Martians’ attitude about discouraging visitors. Partly because they aren’t producing anything people need. It’s been all expense and no return so far. Seems to me they should figure out tourism would give them some income, but I’m not going to rub their noses in the obvious as long as I can get in myself. Of course our designs will have to be updated, when the time comes we’ll detail it, and there will be advances in materials and subsystems to incorporate, but that could be years from now.

“It looks like all of us have a few more productive years with Life Extension, even me. I might as well go do something useful and interesting. Maybe by the time these projects are done we’ll have something else big to do. Somebody has to eventually come up with a star drive, but it’s impossible to predict big advances. Genius and breakthroughs don’t happen on a predictable time table.”

“Are you hoping Jeff develops something?” April asked bluntly.

“Nope, not counting on that at all,” Happy admitted. “Jeff is getting too old to make major discoveries. It’s a young man’s game because it requires flexible thinking. More likely a physicist of some exotic flavor. I know you don’t like Earthies, but having billions of people ups the odds that one will make a breakthrough. Once somebody has a theory… then Jeff is really good at expanding on others’ discoveries, not abstract theorizing. That’s how he developed the fusion generator. Nothing in it was unique to him, but he put all the pieces together.”

“I’ll miss you,” April insisted. Even though they hadn’t been spending much time together.

“I’ll miss all of you,” Happy said softening it. “It isn’t going to be as comfortable. I’ve gotten soft. I like my Wednesday poker game and older friends you don’t see me with, but I do have a circle of friends. I’m spoiled by good food and beer when I want it. But I’m going to walk on Mars, and Barak tells me nothing can equal turning your face up and having Jupiter fill half the sky. I figure you’ll get out there eventually, but I better do it while I can.”

The big wall screen flashed bright yellow three times and a text box appeared on the map over the Pacific. April jumped up without a word to her grandpa and approached the screen, although the box was easily readable from a distance.

“Radar and infrared shows antimissile launch from Vandenberg AFB North American, consistent with intercept of Dionysus’ Chariot on final approach to the Isle of Hawaiki.

“The Chariot tells me they will abort landing and climb over the intercept after they drop. The Isle will protect itself if the warheads divert to targeting them,” Chen wrote.

The two interceptors were visible leaving the California coast as two icons on the screen. The shuttle was still west of Australia so the action spanned a third of the globe. The numbers beside the shuttle changed, indicating they were braking harder to throw the timing of the intercept off. The Chariot had lots of delta V, but the North American missiles had no ability to loiter if their target delayed. They were designed for ballistic targets from other Earth powers, with limited maneuverability.

April wasn’t worried about the Isle. The ship had its own interceptor missiles, more of them than the four the shuttle carried, and laser weapons for shorter range.

“Chen, do you have a channel to object to North American control about this?” April asked. Her words appeared in the floating box.

“Not their military,” Chen spoke, and it too was rendered in text. He had a tiny video window open in the corner of the screen but it was too small to read his facial expressions well.

“You can talk to Houston Space Traffic Control, but they may or may not pass it on. The Chariot has not tried talking to anybody but the Isle.”

“I imagine they are too busy for chatter. Try please,” April asked. “I’ll stay linked in. They need to stop this or I’ll stop it for them,” April promised. Behind her Happy perked up. There wasn’t any way she’d ‘stop it’ that wouldn’t be messy.

Even at the reduced size of the thumbnail it was easy to read on his face that Chen looked alarmed.

April watched as Chen requested contact with Earth Control through Home local. That was easily achieved. The regional military control over Vandenberg could be heard responding but declining to speak to them directly. Vandenberg themselves never came on the circuit.

“All Home vessels are assumed to be armed and hostile, this is not a civilian traffic issue,” Houston was told. “We are still at a state of war and they are assumed to be belligerents.”

“They knew Jeff was on this one,” Happy said behind her. The screen ignored his voice and didn’t render it in text for Chen.

April cut her input and nodded agreement. “They’d been ignoring traffic to the Isle of Hawaiki for months, and all of a sudden it’s belligerent now,” she told her grandpa.

“Restore audio input, retain text,” April instructed the display. Some commands shouldn’t be rendered in text, they needed a human context. She tried to pitch her voice low and firm.

“This is April Lewis on Home,” she spoke up, hoping she was tied in all the way through. “You know damn well my partner is aboard that shuttle. If you fire on it again you will have more descending traffic in your sky than you ever wanted to see. Back off! Or I will take your game piece off the board.”

“Houston,” the military controller said, “please refrain in the future from passing through com from every child with a pocket phone. Only concern yourself with legitimate traffic data.”

“Thank you Houston, this is no longer your concern,” April said icily. Child indeed. That left her without any desire to continue talking, if they were going to be insulting.

Another text box from Chen marked a new double launch from Vandenberg. Did she provoke that? Probably not, they’d have done it anyway when they saw Jeff maneuver. Their command sequence was probably too slow for it to be a response to what she’d said. That second launch was going to require the Chariot to actively engage them. Nothing she could do to help them with that from here. But there wouldn’t be a third launch. She took the extra second to feed her weapons board overlay to Chen as a courtesy. He deserved to see what happened, but she didn’t take the time to explain what she intended. It would quickly become obvious to him.

April cut the audio to Chen, reached to the screen, gathering a group of retro orbited rods still back over the Atlantic between her fingers, and said, “Reserve and activate.” A swipe of her hand did the same to a bundle of rods orbiting the other direction, still well behind Dionysus’ Chariot over the Indian Ocean. A few commands told them to decelerate for TOT arrival at Vandenberg on the California coast within seconds of each other. There were two hundred coming from each direction. Vandenberg was the preeminent Space Defense site in North America. April expected a robust defense. They had no inside intelligence on the base, but the overhead views showed gross features like buildings and what had to be ballistic defenses on the perimeter. A few taps on the expanded view assigned rods to points she called out as targets by a tap on the screen and assigning an order of importance verbally. The computer sorted resources and commands to the best approximation on the fly.

Right behind the first wave of rods she scheduled a trio of devices to fill the sky with vaporized calcium. It was cheap and worked almost as well as more expensive metals like cesium to create a ceiling of radio opaque plasma, blinding their radars. The second wave of rods would target the launch sites that revealed their location by firing on the earlier wave of rods. The interceptors would have much less time to engage the second round of rods appearing out of the overhead cover of vaporized metal. Beam weapons were useless against solid rods with only a forty millimeter cross-section. By the time they burned off the guidance vanes the rods were already pretty well aimed where they would hit.

Behind the second wave of rods the next few weapons were active not just kinetic. They carried relatively small warheads of about ten kiloton. Not nukes, but energy storage devices their lunar allies invented. They would detonate at the surface unless there were still effective interceptors that made them fail fuse above or outright killed them. April tapped and designated targets for those. Just about any large building and those near the runways seemed a good bet to hit. Some few might get nudged off course, but the whole base was a target rich environment. They could as easily get nudged to a higher value target.

If not enough of those got through their defenses she was prepared to do it all over again. April wanted to lay a big warhead on the base, but they were precious and on a big obvious bus that didn’t maneuver and threw a large radar return. They were nowhere near as sturdy or hard to hit as rods. She wouldn’t take a chance on one being intercepted and wasted. She wouldn’t even order one out of orbit until she felt she controlled the sky over the base.

“Good,” Happy said approvingly from behind, watching her. “You can’t do this by half measures or they’ll be second guessing it and speculating they might be able to hold you off next time.”

The plot showed Dionysus’ Chariot, after avoiding the first pair of missiles, had to engage the second pair. They managed to hit them, but it took all four interceptors it carried.

The base hit two of the smaller warheads. Too many for her to risk dropping the big one. She hated to use them up extravagantly, but laid another wave of rods on the surviving launch sites and then another half dozen small warheads. All but one got through and burst at ground level. The base had to be in ruins, but that didn’t fully make the point she intended. She wanted a flat parking lot, not ruins. She dropped another cloaking device all the way down to eight kilometers before it spread a sheet of calcium plasma across their sky blinding any surviving radar for some seconds.

The precious bus with a fusion warhead came out of that overhead and was hit hard enough to make it detonate in fail-safe mode not much below eight thousand meters. It must have been a beam weapon, it happened too fast for an interceptor to climb that high. It still produced a full yield, almost three hundred megaton. The fireball kissed the ground hard melting a depression several kilometers across and throwing melt over four counties, but it didn’t dig a classic crater. The over pressure came down like a hydraulic press on the base. While it didn’t dig a deep crater, it pressed a wider dip around the shallow crater, near twelve kilometers across. Any bunkers would be collapsed. The earthquake was felt all the way from Portland to the end of the Baja, and triggered minor natural rumblings. It busted windows all across downtown Los Angeles, and caused panic from San Diego to San Francisco.

April hesitated. They just didn’t have that many of these warheads to waste even one being artistic. But she’d intended to mark them worse than that. She could dig them a huge new bay on the Pacific that nobody would forget for generations. But Jeff would be better impressed with restraint now she decided. The whole exercise was in his behalf and he might feel it was done overmuch. She was certain she valued him more than he did himself. The battle from the first launch until the last detonation lasted almost twenty minutes.

“Did they attack the Isle?” April asked Chen. She’d been too busy to see what the first two North American interceptors did after Jeff evaded them.

“No, they fell in the ocean. They didn’t destroy them in the air either, but they went down well west, nowhere close to the Isle of Hawaiki,” Chen reported.

“Watch them,” April ordered. “I’m done with Vandenberg,” she decided, “but if they try anything else I’ll do the same to their fancy new Capitol they’re building in Vancouver. With any luck we’d catch the all treacherous scum in session.”

“Unfortunately, they’re nowhere near moved in,” Chen informed her. “We are observing them build, and it’s still an unfinished shell.”

“OK, then I’m going to stand down unless they start shooting again,” April told Chen, and took a deep breath. “Perhaps this was sufficient to demonstrate belligerent to them so they’ll recognize it next time,” April snarled.

“As I was saying… you young folks don’t really need me around anymore,” Happy said, waving at the screen as evidence April could act on her own just fine.

“You approve then?” April asked. If Happy had some critique she’d accept it, from him.

“I don’t see what else you could do,” Happy said, with an exaggerated shrug. “If they can take a pot-shot at you anytime they are in the mood and suffer no price, it will never end. Why did we bother to move out here past L2 if we’re just going to allow them to keep sniping at us any time a Home ship or citizen comes in range of them? No, they needed a lesson today. I hope it was sufficient,” he said, but his voice lacked any confidence.

“For now, maybe.” She was scanning the screen and nothing was launching at them. Chen would have told her if anything was happening elsewhere off screen. Then a message with a high priority code appeared.

“I’ve decided to return to Home,” Jeff told her. “We are proceeding to a lunar insertion orbit and then Home. We should be out of range of any danger now.”

“No! I thought you’d just do another orbit and try to land again,” April said sarcastically.

“One learns… slowly. But one does learn,” Jeff insisted. “I’ll see you for breakfast the day after tomorrow.”

“It’s a date,” April agreed. “I’ll meet you at dock.”

Jeff just barely acknowledged it with an “OK,” and disconnected.

“You want to search the Earthie news and see how they are taking it?” Happy asked.

“They and their precious public opinions can go straight to the Devil in the same cozy hand basket,” April said. “Did you bring some dessert? I have coffee all set to brew.”

Chapter 2

Jonathan Hughes was almost done for the day. The Kings County Farmer’s Cooperative Number Three was under a hiring freeze, so he was doing the job of near two men. He couldn’t put the extra hours on his time report, but the work still had to be done. If he didn’t want to be paid for the official hours and do the rest on his own time there were plenty of folks waiting to take his job on those terms. He was fifty nine years old and glad they hadn’t already forced him out for a younger man.

He’d outlasted the previous three owners of the land and survived the transition to government control of the farm as well as consolidation with other private tracts. So he did know the land and business. The land was about the last agricultural land this close to LA. If they hadn’t enacted very strict anti-urbanization laws about twenty years ago, he was sure the fields would all be condos and subdivisions right now. It slowed it down, but he had no doubt the population pressure would have it paved over and built up in another two decades. He wouldn’t be here or working for the Coop in twenty years so that wasn’t his concern.

The field he looked over had been in almonds over forty years ago. He remembered passing them on the way to school. Old Mr. Gant who he’d worked for out of high school had told him stories about the same fields being in tomatoes, and had unbelievable tales of migrants hand picking them in the fields. Funny how none of those changes had ever seemed important enough to be in his history lessons.

Last year the field had been in beans and it was planted in rye right now. It was so short it didn’t look anything like the rye grown when he was a kid. You’d have to run a roller over it to make it lodge. The last couple years had been iffy for frost. He’d seen hot years and cold years, and two serious droughts in his career. If the rye didn’t fully mature for grain it would serve for silage at a good price, as well as keep down the weeds for the spring planting. The weeds were all herbicide resistant now, but the government planting manual insisted they had to be used. The rye really helped as long as you didn’t say that was a reason for planting it. Like his hour tally, it was far from the only lie required to game the system. Jon would have spent the money on fertilizer, but then he didn’t have stock in any herbicide companies.

The sun was on the horizon when he was finally done repairing the piping for irrigation. A bright line across the southern sky caught his eye and he looked. It was unusual to see a meteor so bright against the steel blue sky even this near sundown, and then there was another…

The streaks high overhead from the east were joined by a faint splay of others lower on the far horizon to the southwest. They all converged on an unseen point well below the horizon. LA? Was Jon’s first thought, but no, it was angled too far to the west. He wasn’t sure where it was aimed. The huge ‘V’ of bright points all vanished over the horizon to a meeting point he couldn’t see, then a flare of light spread a thin silvery cloud barely visible, that expanded and changed colors. Even this far away it had lightning visible flashing around the edges, low and to the left of the sunset.

Fewer, but more substantial tracks followed, piercing the odd cloud and lit it up with flares from underneath. Jon stood mouth hanging open shocked at the scale of the violence spanning a quarter of his horizon, all in silence. The birds he hadn’t been aware of hearing before reminded him of their presence by their sudden silence, making the familiar scene of the field eerie and alien by the changes.

The whole sequence repeated on almost as grand a scale and then a flare lit up fully half the horizon bright enough to dazzle his vision and make him look down. If he hadn’t been sheltered behind the curve of the Earth he’d have been flash blinded. As the multicolored fireball lifted above his horizon, cooling as he watched, a faint rumble from the initial bombardment finally reached him through the ground, a noise he’d have shrugged off as a minor natural earth tremor another time.

Jon pulled his phone out of his pocket to call his wife, but there was no connection showing. When he looked across the field to the pump house the outside light that showed it had power was dark. That’s when he realized how bad it was. If the power was out this far north, LA was certainly down. If what he understood about atomic bombs was right it would be down hard for weeks or months, from destroyed equipment, given how screwed up all the supply and repair had gotten lately. About that time the ground wave from the big bomb passed through, so strong it made him catch his balance.

The action seemed over, except there was still a double sunset hanging in the sky, the left one fading but still weird colors.

Hell, he had a hard time keeping simple farm machinery in repair. What would the power companies do if their high tech gear was all badly damaged? If the pump house across the field was down he’d bet anything all the pumps and valves and aqueduct controls to feed LA were dead.

No water in LA and it would revert to desert so fast the city people would be astonished. No power was almost as bad given how city people lived. No traffic controls, no elevators, no refrigeration in the stores, no bank processing. It would be a unholy mess. He’d known for a long time that if things fell apart in LA most folks would stay there until it was far too late to try to leave. But the few who knew better would still be a mob spreading out from the city.

He’d made a few half-hearted preparations, hoping he’d never need them, but it came down to using them now or never, because in a few hours they’d be useless. Jon let out a big sigh. He was too old for this crap and having to be a refugee. But he didn’t want to be here when the mob came north. He walked to his truck and didn’t lock up the pipe shed or put the gear away. That was all valueless now. Stuff from a previous life.

He held his breath briefly, anxious, but the truck started, which meant he might be alive in a week. Apparently the EMP wasn’t that bad this far away. If the last weapon that pounded Vandenberg had detonated at fifty or sixty kilometers altitude all of southern California would have had the older legacy systems fried, including his truck ignition, but Jonathan had no idea about all that.

It was a dark green 2069 GM Brazil hybrid diesel and belonged to the Coop. It was no coincidence he’d watched and waited until the same year and color truck came up for sale locally and bought the identical vehicle for himself. He drove the company truck back to the fenced equipment yard and parked beside his own vehicle. There was the supervisors car parked right by the entry, not in his assigned space, and some sort of emergency light shining in the office window. It was darker now with the sun completely down, and he welcomed the dusk to cover him switching plates with the Coop vehicle. That accomplished Jon went in the office where his supervisor was talking earnestly on the Coop radio net to somebody. The man waved at him, distracted, and didn’t stop talking. From what he could hear of the conversation he simply wanted to know what was going on and the fellow on the other end was probably as clueless as he was. He grabbed a note pad off the desk and scribbled:

I no longer work for the Coop, effective immediately. Jonathan Hughes 9/13/2090

He put it down with his fob for the company truck on top of the pad. That was also his key that unlocked the field gates and other areas to which he had access, and he walked out. As he was driving out the gate he saw his boss in his rear view mirror. He finally came out the door, with the pad in his hand, in time to see Jonathan driving away down the access road. Too late, and there was really nothing to talk about. The man would have simply argued he needed to stay there and lend his support until things were normal again. Jon had his doubts the man would see another paycheck for a long time, and any return to actual normal might take years.

It wasn’t like the Coop produced a variety of products that could support people the way an old fashioned family farm could. Nothing of any particular use like grain or oil seed was even stored on the property. They all got transported straight from the field to silos and storage far away. In a week they’d all be as hungry as the city folk if they couldn’t shop at the local market.

Very few people even had a personal garden, certainly not Coop workers. If you lived in company housing, as the Hughes did, you had a company ground crew do your little patch of yard weekly, and nobody was encouraged to even put a few flowers around their door. It just made extra work for the yard crew. Mostly they’d mow your stuff right along with the grass.

They didn’t have seed and supplies to fend for themselves come spring even if they could last until then. Without fresh deliveries of diesel fuel, which seemed unlikely, they couldn’t plant and harvest a full growing season even though they had the equipment. Given how he’d been treated, he wouldn’t be surprised but what they might be charged with crimes someday, if they used Coop equipment to survive.

The reason he switched plates with the Coop truck was that law enforcement scanned plates continually. If he left the county in his personal truck he knew he’d be pulled over before he was a hundred kilometers from home and interrogated about his intentions. There weren’t officially internal passports, but if you didn’t have a destination that could be checked you could end up sitting in the local lockup for a few days. That seemed a bad idea right now.

They didn’t pull over agency vehicles. He knew that from experience, because he’d driven as far as south of Bakersfield and north of Modesto for parts and supplies and never been pulled over. His boss was OK, but a little dense. He had no doubt the man would never notice the plate switch. If things went as badly as he imagined they might, the truck might still be sitting where he parked it a year from now, and nobody the wiser.

He stopped at the Coop garage and topped his tanks off. Nobody was there and normally there was a second shift in the repair shop. The fuel was gravity fed from an above ground tank and needed no power. This was the first really serious illegal thing he’d done, stealing fuel. The plates were a minor matter in comparison. If they’d closed the gate and locked the place up it would have been messier, since he’d left his fob on his boss’ desk, but he knew the man would think of that first thing and demand it. It was just how his officious mind worked. He’d been mentally prepared to drive through the gate if he needed to get fuel, and had bolt cutters under the seat to unlock the nozzle, but he was glad to avoid all that.

The thought occurred to him that he might get supplies for the truck from the repair shop, but it was dark and he didn’t know where things were stored. He could delay and get caught in the act, fumbling around, looting the place. Jon quickly dropped the idea, not even checking to see if the building was locked up, and headed home.

His wife, Jenny, was familiar with his concerns they might have to leave the Coop some day, if not visibly enthusiastic about the idea. She was aware he’d buried some things near the family vacation home they still owned north of Sacramento. His younger brother owned half of that still, but he didn’t expect to see the man and his family there for one simple reason. They lived in San Diego, far to the south, and he couldn’t see them making the journey with no advance warning that it was time to bug out.

When he arrived home he backed up right to the front door. No point in trying to be subtle now, he wanted to be on the road before every fool and his dog figured out what was going down. When he opened up the door there was soft luggage and cloth shopping bags filled and tied shut in a line all down the hall. There was a camping lantern filling the kitchen with light and his wife was still packing things from the pantry. It was a tremendous relief he wasn’t going to have to persuade her.

“I have most of the kitchen stuff done. Can you take these plastic bags and grab all the good blankets and some sheets from the bedroom? I already have your clothes and shoes in a couple bags there,” she said, pointing down the hall.

“Thank you, thank you for all the time you saved,” Jon said, hugging her.

“Of course,” she said, giving him a quick pat on the back with both hands and disengaging. “Hugs later when we are safe. No time to waste now. Start loading and tell me about it on the road.”

*

Jon didn’t speed. He actually had to go a little faster than he’d have liked to not draw attention to them for going too slow. The truck would have gotten a little better mileage slower.

He related his view of the battle standing in the field to his wife as he drove. She told of finding a functioning radio station after the big ground wave made her run outside and see the tail end glow in the sky. She knew it for a lie just from that much, that they were calling it an earthquake and saying nothing at all to suggest hostile military action.

“That’s crazy,” Jonathan said. “The whole sky was lit up with weapons coming in from both directions. Nobody could mistake it for what it was.”

“How many people stand out in an open field like you and see the sky?” Jenny asked. “It was well after dinner and most shift workers would be inside after dark. For that matter how many city dwellers have a good view of the sky down near the horizon? It’s all blocked with other buildings and signs and crap. And once the power was out the net would go down and those few people who did see it and catch it on their phone couldn’t post it for their friends to all see.”

“What is the point of hiding it?” Jon said. “It’s all going to come out eventually.”

“Huh! You’re so charmingly honest, Jon. The same point as what we’re doing,” his wife said. “They’re buying a few hours to set up and deal with it before the mob gets ugly. We’ll be at the cabin, God willing. I imagine they are trying to get all kinds of emergency power set up, at least for things like hospitals and police stations. They’ll be trying to call up National Guard and military units with no effective net or phone systems to recall them. Begging Vancouver for help just like they’ve been trying to get for the Gulf states back east. What we need to do we just may accomplish. I don’t give them much chance at all to get a handle on it. People are loath to go out in the night with no lights, They’ll expect them to come back on. They always have before. But by tomorrow morning a few people will start wondering if they shouldn’t be headed for somewhere safer. By tomorrow night when the lights don’t come back, and the water starts failing even where they have towers. It’s going to be a mess.”

They rode in silence awhile through the night. There was almost no other traffic.

“There isn’t anything they could say to make it better,” Jon decided.

“Nope. Once people figure out the power and water aren’t coming back on for days, they will realize they have half a tank of gas or forgot to plug the car in to charge after work… and they have half a bag of corn chips and a couple past the best use date cans of beans dip, and the pizza place sure as hell isn’t delivering. Well, they’re going to go crazy.”

“I’m sorry, I thought maybe you didn’t get it the last couple years. I thought I might have to convince you to evacuate when I got home,” Jon admitted.

“I got it. I was just never comfortable talking about it. I’ve been the one to tell Cindy several times over the last couple years that if things ever got really bad to come to the chalet. Even if they have to walk there. I’m not sure our son-in-law gets it either, but I think Cindy does. That’s theirs to decide to come. I can’t call them and it’s not reasonable to sit here waiting a couple days for them to catch up. Our own window of opportunity will have passed. We’ve both been telling them it was crazy to live near LA for years. For lots of reasons.”

Jon grinned, as bad as things were. He never called the cabin the chalet. The ugly thing was as dated as could be by the architecture. The stupid thing looked like an old Dairy Queen from his youth. When his parents were alive it was considered quite stylish.

“LA is going to be a jungle,” he decided, dreading the vision.

“Not for long,” Jenny said. “The fire hydrants won’t work either.”

Nobody stopped them. The local police were too busy with other matters to stop an agency registered truck driving legally and carefully down the expressway through their jurisdiction. If they were a problem they would be somebody else’s problem soon.

Chapter 3

“Joel, you aren’t being honest with me about Home,” his Foreign Minister accused the Prime Minister of France. “You have my letter of resignation in your desk if I no longer have your trust. There’s even less reason not to recognize them now than the last time we spoke. Yet every motion I’ve made that way has been thwarted.”

“Did you think I’d forgotten?” Joel asked. “I have no complaints. I know you have an affection for Home. Despite what you may think, I have no hostility towards them. I just see to France first. Our countrymen once had an affection for America, but they got very little advantage for France out of their support. I’d do better for us.”

“If I even knew what you want I could negotiate it,” Broutin offered.

“It isn’t so easy now,” Joel claimed. “There are biometrics now that will reveal exactly what you really want even before you are done lying about it for me. And you are a terrible liar, even without the technology to catch you out. It’s to our advantage you not know what France seeks for now, no matter how frustrating personally. I may need to send you to negotiate in innocence. You would be my shield from discovery. That’s an important part of your job. So I ask the reverse – that you trust me. Once this card is played the advantage is gone,” he said, holding an imaginary card under his thumb like he was poised to throw it down. “So I intend to play it when the pot is richer.”

*

Jeff looked tired beyond anything April had seen when he cleared the bearing and came into Home proper. April could have met him out at the security station in the unspun hub, but she didn’t want to have to chit-chat with Jon Davis’s security person. She wasn’t feeling guilty, but neither did she especially want to explain to anyone how she’d come to bombard North America, again.

If experience told her anything, it was that given a big enough group of people somebody would disagree with what she’d done. As Home’s population increased that just got more certain. If the circumstances that led to their original rebellion were put before the people again, she had no doubt they’d still go for independence. But it wouldn’t be anything near the same margin as before. Those who hadn’t lived through the revolution didn’t have the same feel for their history.

April was pretty sure she’d be asked to officially explain before the Assembly, and she was prepared to do so, but she didn’t need a dozen unofficial versions circulating to be analyzed beforehand.

When they went to the elevators there was a newsie with a shoulder camera rig waiting for them. She had no helpers, just the pro equipment, and a logo on her jacket for a European news outfit. April braced herself, but the woman directed her attention and question to Jeff.

“Mr. Singh. Will you give me a statement about your bombardment of North America?”

Jeff looked at her camera lens with a quizzical expression. “You must be misinformed. I was recently fired upon above international waters above the Pacific, well away from the North American land mass. We fired upon those missiles trying to intercept us and destroy my shuttle, but they were simply unmanned weapons, not manned aircraft, and at no time did I ever direct any fire towards the North American land mass.”

“That’s not what the press is reporting,” the woman said.

“Then they are misinformed, or lying,” Jeffery said, with an indifferent shrug. “I have no real interest in correcting them. The press says all sorts of outrageous stupid things every day. Perhaps you should obtain commercial satellite coverage of the time frame and location in which you are interested. There are several third party sources of such imagery available at very reasonable prices. Then you could ask intelligent questions about the matter instead of repeating rumors without citing sources.”

“If you didn’t destroy Vandenberg on the California coast, who did?” she demanded.

Jeff waved the question away. “First you repeat gossip, and then ask me to address hypothetical questions for you. I am not your supervisor to help you prepare an interview. Please speak to me another time when you have some sensible questions. I’m tired. The North Americans tried to kill me at the start of my journey back here. You may be surprised to discover that was a stressful and disturbing event, that left me upset and tired. I’m going to go have breakfast with my business partner and sleep for at least half a day.”

“Do you realize people are terrified of you?” The reporter asked.

“Are you?” Jeff asked. “You seem so terrified of me you aren’t afraid to block my path unarmed and insult me. I simply want to get on the open elevator behind you, and go home. If I were half as terrifying as you suggest, I’d think you’d be afraid to stop and confront such a monster.”

The reporter looked over her shoulder and begrudgedly stepped aside. Once they were in the elevator she looked at April like she was seeing her for the first time and threw out one last question.

“You’re April Lewis, aren’t you? Do you have any insight on what happened with North America?”

“Yes,” April said, as the doors were sliding shut. “The idiots fired at us the first time and then a second, and I declined to allow them a third free shot after warning them.”

If the reporter had any follow questions up the doors closing cut it off.

*

“Why are the Norte Americanos accusing me?” Jeff asked confused. “As I understand what you related, you spoke to them directly on com and identified yourself by name. Do they think I somehow passed orders to you in secret and you couldn’t act on your own? They could release that recording and make it all clear.”

“It would also show they were haughty as hell, that they were given a chance to break it off even after they first fired on you, and they reaffirmed they are at war with us and feel free to ascribe belligerence to any of our vessels simply because they are known to be armed, whether they are acting aggressively or not. They may be rethinking the wisdom of all that, I hope. Worse it contained my accusation that it was an attempted assassination, and they failed in it. They weren’t even able to defend themselves from the person they had just labeled an annoying ‘child’ with a pocket phone,” April concluded. She seemed a little peeved.

“Oh my… People at the bottom of the gravity gradient should control their mouths.”

“Yeah, Happy would say that, but he’d have expressed it a little saltier,” April agreed.

*

“Did the commander at Vandenberg share his thinking on this, while alive?” General Kilpatrick inquired. He seemed rather subdued.

“It appears somebody had to leak human intelligence on Home to him,” his planner admitted. “But where that could happen is hard to pin down. A couple dozen people had legitimate access to it. Singh’s movements weren’t considered that high a level of intelligence.

“Now it’s true PAC traffic could have defused it. You’ve seen the video of the call from Houston civilian control. The girl is in your face offensive. I don’t know many officers who would back down when being scolded by a thirteen, maybe fourteen year old girl.”

“She’s eighteen, possibly nineteen by now,” Kilpatrick said. “I haven’t looked up her exact date of birth. The genetic changes they do, and the Life Extension, stop them from aging visibly. I can’t say what it does to their thinking. If it keeps them from maturing. Of course she still gets the experience time affords, but emotionally? Can they mature emotionally without physical aging? I knew this young woman was dangerous before. I warned about that. If she is impulsive from lack of maturity or if it’s just her basic personality, who is to say? What does it matter? She had a gun to his head and he lacked the imagination to realize it over ego and superficial appearances.”

“I remember the conversation and the video you shared. Orders were passed along to leave them alone. But there wasn’t any reason given. Zealots are difficult to manage,” Bellini sighed. That was a brave thing to admit.

“So are Patriots, apparently,” Kilpatrick groused. “The controller who got snarky with the girl wasn’t our man backing up his brethren. It was a Patriot at a strongly Patriot facility.”

Bellini looked surprised, but appraising. “Well, no wonder they haven’t been all over us about it.”

“Indeed, and it still gives us little room to lay the blame off on the Patriots. The Homies don’t make a lot of public pronouncements from their Assembly, but I’ve seen quotes from private parties that they see little difference between us. I can’t see any advantage to faulting the controller, even though it is tempting to have somebody alive to blame. If the Patriots stay silent and don’t attack us over the whole mess I’d be happy to return the favor of ignoring it, and present a unified face to the Homies.

“This is going to be expensive to fix. We’re just starting to get reports about how bad it is. The disaster people I’m talking to keep saying how close it was to being much, much worse. The main thing is, we are going to have to send several small expeditionary forces into Southern California to extract certain vital facilities and people. We are already lifting irreplaceable skilled people out by air. It’s just going to take too long to restore order around those key plants and facilities. The workers are spread all over amid chaos and hard to extract if they didn’t stay or rally to their work place. We can also expect a hostile response to a military incursion once it becomes obvious they are offering no aid to the civilian population and word of that gets around.”

“That’s too bad, but at least the internet and legacy phone systems are down hard and if we have to get rough with them to secure things nobody will know,” Bellini said.

*

Lieutenant Pardey thought they might survive now, but it had been a close thing. He’d been knocked senseless for a moment when his helmet smacked the inside of the window on his armored up URV. Returning along the city street to the expressway the entire road had lifted in a line down the middle for a hundred meters when the sewer line beneath blew up. That had been the low point where he’d thought they might not make it. The bright orange flame suggested somebody had poured gasoline down the drain and lit it off as they approached. There couldn’t be much gas or diesel to be found out here now, on the third day after the grid went down. Yet they were wasting it trying to kill him. He doubted he’d ever forget the sight of the pavement bulging and lifting.

Fortunately for them, their driver had been hugging the left side of the road and it shoved the Urban Reconnaissance Vehicle hard to one side instead going off directly underneath. They’d bounced hard off the curb and side swiped an abandoned car, but not rolled. That explosion could have easily lofted them into the air, and these vehicles were pretty top heavy. The design had been improved somewhat, but it was unlikely they’d come back down upright and in control with the road destroyed under them.

An important semiconductor plant, on the edge of the expanded Silicon Valley region, down between Coyote and Gilroy, had been their objective. It was reported to have a half dozen designers and engineers holed up waiting for rescue. Air rescue from Moffett had more sites to evacuate than assets, and this was in driving range. They’d tasked Pardey’s military police unit to drive in with three URVs. The plan was to extract the techies after using their expertise to mark critical equipment to be removed later. Most of their force would be left behind with supplies and ammo for a week to guard it until they could get some big trucks in with a better armed and heavier armored escort.

That had been the plan. Now they were just trying to get back to base alive. When they got there the plant had been in flames. Not shooting out the windows, because it didn’t have any windows. But the complex ventilation and filtration plant on the roof was doing a great blowtorch imitation out all the vents. They had turned on the CBN filtration, not knowing what was burning in the plant. The smoke was silvery and opaque, potentially toxic.

If there was anybody alive inside they hadn’t come out, and they didn’t have the equipment or training to do an entry into a burning building. Besides, they’d already encountered sniper fire on the way down. Nobody had suggested exiting the vehicles to investigate what looked like a lost cause, and he wouldn’t order it. The area had far too much cover for shooters just waiting to ambush them. The cluster of private vehicles by the loading docks caused Pardey to suspect the workers were still inside. Whoever burnt the building hadn’t spared the vehicles and he couldn’t imagine the workers had ran away on foot during the attack. If they had, there was certainly no searching the area to find them with his small force.

Pardey had been sternly ordered not to stop and render aid to civilians along the way or in the area of the plant. His command obviously had no idea what conditions were in the field. Nobody had politely approached and asked their help. It was obvious the natives blamed anyone attached to the government for the state of things, and were enraged. Indeed, his driver had cursed at one heavy fusillade, and said aloud that they hadn’t riled the Spacers up. The irrational depth of their anger had hit him when they’d passed a few burnt out postal vehicles. If there was any guilt to be assigned the Post Office had to be near the bottom of any list of agencies who might have provoked the Homies. But they had red white and blue vans that were a much easier target of public wrath than his convoy.

The truth about all the lights in the sky and the huge explosion northwest of LA had obviously filtered through the civilian population almost as fast as it ran through the military grapevine. Efforts to label it a simple earthquake hadn’t worked more than a few hours. But their many layers removed superiors who had tweaked the Homies weren’t accessible, and they were. He had a dozen scars and smears of lead on his armored windshield from high powered rifles the Feds had supposedly outlawed and confiscated twenty five years ago. Somebody definitely forgot to turn theirs in.

When Pardey reported the facility lost and that they’d been taking sniper fire, he’d stated his intent to try to regain the safety of the main highway. He’d held his breath while the radio was silent for a few heartbeats, but they didn’t order him to a new objective. Any far ranging detour would have been problematic for lack of fuel. But after a slight hesitation he got back a terse “Roger”.

The hostile fire was worse along the return route, because people who saw or heard them pass earlier, anticipated they might return the same way. Not to mention the sewer bomb. Lieutenant Pardey was smart enough not to try finding a parallel route on narrower streets that could easily be blocked with cars or trees. At least out on the main highway he had the wide shoulders and room to maneuver.

There were occasionally people and small groups visible in the distance, but they took cover or in one case what appeared to be a family just threw themselves flat as they went by. Their assumption seemed to be his patrol would fire on civilians. That bothered him to see. Pardey hadn’t released any of his men to return fire, and wasn’t going to as long as they were rolling. They hadn’t clearly seen anyone firing on them, and he refused to fire on the one building he suspected harbored a sniper. He didn’t even have his one turret on the command vehicle with a fifty caliber manned. To his mind it was too exposed. Better to just stay buttoned up against light arms.

Right now, Pardey just hoped he was doing the right thing returning to base. It didn’t feel smart to be driving back deeper into a more densely populated area. But as bad as things were, and he was sure they were far worse than the brass realized, he wasn’t anywhere near deserting. But with transport and weapons… the idea had occurred to him.

*

Jon Davis stopped opposite the blond young man. It was lunch time in the old cafeteria, and Jon’s entire reason for being here was to speak with him, but getting his own lunch and eating it might soften the meeting as if it possibly could be a coincidence of timing. Jon was pretty straight forward and confrontational, but he’d been trying to mix a little subtlety into his manner.

“Mr. Weir,” he said, with what he hoped was a friendly nod. “I’m Jon Davis, head of security for M3. Do you mind if I join you while you eat?”

James Weir looked around at all the other empty seats. He wasn’t a fool, quite the opposite. He made an open handed wave at the vacant seat to allow it. His eyes made a few flicks behind his spex, checking something. Not all Earthies were so visibly comfortable with high end spex, but he obviously wasn’t new to them. On Earth people weren’t as accepting of them. Some high end restaurants wouldn’t seat you wearing them.

“Have I done something to call myself to the attention of Security?” James asked.

“Just being a North American on Home is sufficient. That may sound prejudiced and offend you. I realize it doesn’t meet the technical standards for probable cause under USNA law, but I have much more discretion as Head of Security now that we have dropped USNA law.” Jon also knew how loosely that theory in law was followed in North America.

“We moved out to L2 for a reason. The North Americans seemed unable to resist taking the occasional random shot at us when it was too easy. And my unfortunate personal experience has been that an unreasonable percentage of our Norte Americano visitors have turned out to be assassins or saboteurs. So, while I have no specific complaint, and you are in no way detained or restricted, I’d like to be convinced you aren’t here to cause trouble.”

“Might I not lie to you about that?” James asked, with an amused expression.

“Not effectively. I will use veracity software on everything you say. There is no legal prohibition against using it on Home. More importantly I have forty years of law enforcement experience, and trust my internal bullshit meter implicitly. The two complement each other. If you make my needle so much as twitch,” Jon said, illustrating it with an index finger. “I’m going to find out everything about you down to how well you played with others in kindergarten. I haven’t bothered to do that yet, but I’m a very direct sort of person and wanted to interview you first rather than later.”

James looked interested.

“I tend to believe you. My own social skills don’t tend to be in that area so much, but I can see where working security for years would hone them. The first thing I did four days ago on entering Home was register my spex with the local net, and get a local ID,” James said, tapping his temple piece. “Have you not been tracking me? I’m quite used to that and expected it. If I turned off my phone or spex back in North America that would be sufficient right there for the authorities to assume I was up to something nefarious.”

Jon shook his head sharply negative.

“You don’t grasp the local attitude yet. If I started tracking people or doing other data mining or audio recording in public places, this crew wouldn’t put up with it. I’d either be challenged to a duel, or if it was notorious and excessive, they might just stuff me out the closest airlock in my boxer shorts as a concession to my dignity, but lacking a pressure suit.”

“But I’m an outsider, surely they expect you to collect intelligence on foreigners?”

“Homies, as a group, are rather above average intelligence,” Jon assured him. “Most are from Earth, and they’ve seen how it works there first hand. They are not only aware of history, but have demonstrated an unusual ability to apply its lessons to their own lives. They know outsider really means outside the power structure, to anybody in authority. Statists always are more comfortable with each other than their own plebes, and they’ll conspire against the peasants together without shame. That’s why you see their intelligence agencies withholding information from the public when it’s obvious other governments already know. They’d never believe I’d do it to you, and not to them.”

“That’s a cynical assessment you wouldn’t dare espouse on Earth,” James said.

“Yeah, but if you’d wander out into the corridor now, and repeat it to the first person you see, chances are they will look at you like a dolt for stating the obvious, and just say, “Well duhh.”

“Alright,” James decided, and gave Jon a long hard look. “This is your territory. I’ll tentatively grant you the possibility things are really that different here and play it that way. I moved to Brazil a few years ago, and God only knows I’m still adjusting to how different things are there. When I checked your name against the local net it showed your face and listed you as Head of Security for Home, not M3, but I’ll assume those things are congruent.”

“I serve a year at a time, at the pleasure of the Assembly,” Jon explained. “All the registered voters approve my continuance and budget when other expenditures are approved. Mitsubishi grants me the same title as a convenience and endorsement, but without any budget, although they do donate my office cubic. I also happen to be the Head of the Militia, which doesn’t pay anything either. I’d flash my badge on you but they never gave me one.”

“Three hats? I’m impressed,” James admitted.

“Yes, but only one paid.”

“Thrifty too, aren’t they? But tell me. Why are you talking to me again?”

“Think of me as a small town Sheriff,” Jon invited. “You’re the new face in town. Are you going to cause me trouble or do you have legitimate business here?”

“First of all, I’m North American. I haven’t renounced my citizenship. You understand it costs about a half million to process that now? And just because they do the paperwork and allow you aren’t holding any state secrets or legal obligations doesn’t mean you can take any funds out of the country. If you own any significant real estate you will probably be required to liquidate it. So it’s a catch 22. You have to liquidate but then can’t take the funds abroad.”

“I wasn’t aware of that in detail,” Jon admitted. “I have an acquaintance who liquidated his home and was sent the proceeds, but he had an honorable military discharge by executive decree to guarantee it. They sent him his money on her direct orders.”

“That had to be Wiggen,” James deduced. “You have some high powered friends.”

“He has some high powered friends. If there’s some overlap it’s hard to define,” Jon said.

That seemed overly modest, but James ignored it.

“I have some family land in Nebraska I may inherit. I’m not ready to just write it off. If I renounce my citizenship I can kiss it goodbye. My dad is still living on it and working it, but between the inheritance taxes and fees to remove personal funds as an alien that’s what would happen. I haven’t been back to America since I was a graduate student in Brazil.

“So I’m hardly a USNA agent in any sense. Indeed, my business partners would be worried if I went back right now. The USNA doesn’t seem to differentiate between state secrets and commercial secrets too well. They’d be terrified I could be pressured to divulge what I’m working on if I returned home.”

“And what are you working on, in a very general way?” Jon asked.”

“I’m a partner in a Brazilian company exploring new tech to improve space drives. Brazil doesn’t have a heavy space presence. But everything we need is here on Home. We’re generating some business for your fabricators and ship builders. Dave’s shop is building an unmanned space probe for us that will be used to test our systems. Does that satisfy your curiosity? I’m sure Dave would confirm it if you ask him.”

“Maybe,” Jon said, openly skeptical. “He might admit you are a customer, but if I asked much more he’d put on his poker face, and want to know why I thought it was any of my business. Dave doesn’t keep high end customers by blabbing their business to others.”

“I find that… encouraging,” James said. “He had the highest recommendations of any yard on Home. Do you have any further advice for an… outsider?”

This was the point at which James expected to be told with whom he should do business, or solicited for a bribe.

Jon thought a bit about it, while making some headway on his cooling breakfast.

“Dave’s place is good. If you need transport Old Man Larkin’s line is about the most flexible. He has a lot of pilots on retainer, and will bust his butt to get you a ship at dock on short notice, when the others are all booked up. Just don’t expect him to be pleasant. He’s an ornery old cuss. If you run into any problems with local supply or funding, talk to Jeff Singh and his partners. He’s got connections everywhere and they have their own respectable sources of intelligence too. He’s probably aware of you because he does related subsystems if not whole drives. But he’s an honest businessman.”

“I’d be afraid to become too connected to Mr. Singh,” James said. “He’s too controversial on Earth to want to be identified with him. The public image below is that he resorts to violence on a grand scale far too quickly.”

“You could find a few folks here of the same opinion,” Jon admitted. “But most of the complaint that way is going to be from Earth, and other than a few who only manufacture for a Earth market, not many care for what Earthies think anymore. If you need to talk to Jeff do it on the sly and tell him to keep it private. You notice he hasn’t bombarded anywhere but China and North America? Why do you think that is?”

“Nobody else has been stupid enough to shoot at him first?” James asked.

“Got it in one,” Jon said. “You seem to fit the not-stupid demographic if you do ever decide to emigrate.”

“Not likely, but you never know. I might not have any choice if they want to force me to return to Nebraska, the way things are there now. If it becomes plain I’ll never inherit the ranch there isn’t much else holding me to them,” James admitted. “My own folks don’t even want me to visit unless things settle down. They’re pretty self-sufficient, but traveling there would be an uncertain adventure for me now.”

Jon had as much breakfast as he was going to eat and stood up with his tray.

“Thank you for answering my concerns. I’ll try not to intrude on your time again, but if you have any problems a public servant can address, feel free to come talk to me.”

“Thank you,” James said, simply. What he didn’t say was how impressed he was that Jon was walking away, and had never even hinted for a bribe. That was amazing.

Chapter 4

“Do you know a James Weir?” April asked Jeff.

Jeff looked surprised. “I know of a James Weir, but I’ve never met him. I doubt he’s your James Weir. I can’t imagine you’d know him. He was first author on a rather interesting paper just a few years ago. If I can remember the title,” Jeff said, furrowing his brow in thought. “A Model of Quantum Tunneling compliant with Relativity, upon the Interaction of Multiple Forces”. I think it had a two co-authors.”

“That’s probably the guy,” April insisted. “Jon asked me to turn a general inquiry loose in our networks to see what I could find out about him. He’s here for a Brazilian company and says he’s working on space drives. I hate it when Jon asks me something and I don’t already know the answer.”

“I can’t imagine applying his research to space drives,” Jeff said. “I was looking at it as having more application to electronics. I’ll admit I didn’t follow his reasoning very well. I might have put more effort into it if I hadn’t considered it peripheral to our interests. Did Jon ask you to keep quiet about researching him?”

“Jon would assume I hold everything closely that has to do with intelligence. But at least now I have something to point him to, like I’m not totally clueless. He said Dave is building hardware for them, so it isn’t just theoretical research.”

“Lots of luck getting Dave to tell you anything,” Jeff said. “But that’s how I expect him to be if anyone comes sniffing around for our projects. I’ve had him refuse to show me our own stuff until he threw a tarp over other work in the shop.”

“If he’s building hardware… he’ll have to take it out,” April pointed out, meaningfully.

“Yeah, it’s not going to be something he can carry out in an attaché case,” Jeff agreed. “I’ll have Chen set up a permanent surveillance of the north end lift port. We should have done that ages ago anyway. Nothing leaving there should be a surprise to us.”

“It doesn’t bother you to snoop on friends?” April asked.

“Snoop would be spy robots sent in his shop,” Jeff said. “Recording what and who comes out a public port isn’t anymore snooping than watching the public corridor outside your door.”

April considered that, weighed it against her own tendency to know everything happening she could…

“Agreed. I believe that is a moral, defensible position.”

“Good, then you can call and tell Chen to do it,” Jeff said. “He takes orders from you better than from me.”

At April’s lifted eyebrow he explained. “He usually figures he knows why I’m asking him to investigate things, and he’ll argue with me about using the resources. With you, he’s stopped asking why and just expects to be confounded. Chen’s still trying to figure out how you connect the dots on things. He still mutters occasionally about you calling him up and asking him to research the succession of ancient Spanish royalty from your club.”

“OK, I’d be happy to do that for you. Have you figured out how I connect the dots?” April asked.

“I never expected you could explain how you do it yourself,” Jeff admitted. “I just assume we think very differently, and it’s a plus for both of us to contribute disparate talents. What’s bothering me now is that I’d have expected this Mr. Weir and I should think much more alike. I usually understand the reasoning behind physics. It’s straightforward, and my sort of thing… I need to go back and read his paper again and see what I missed.”

“You do that. And if it still doesn’t click, he’s on station. Ask him to dinner, or you’d be secure to talk to him over the local net. Maybe he’d explain,” April suggested.

“I’ll drop a message to him,” Jeff agreed.

*

April had the filter on her phone set to ask her if she’d take calls from anyone she hadn’t spoken with before. She didn’t like to do that, but did so after explaining to half a dozen strangers that she wasn’t going to make multiple private statements about defending Jeff. When it came up in the Assembly she’d satisfy everybody at once in a public forum. She’d check out the callers first now.

The last lady had pushed her over the edge to filter her calls. She’d said, “Well, what if it doesn’t come up in the Assembly?” April kindly pointed out she could bring the matter up for discussion if nobody else did, as long as she was a registered taxpaying voter. “You are, aren’t you?” April inquired. The woman hadn’t affirmed she was qualified and ended the call quickly. April didn’t need any more of that level of foolishness.

The next call was somebody she knew, but who rarely called her, Dr. Ames.

“Hello Jelly, how is the gene business going?” April asked.

“Surprisingly well. It’ll go even better when your friend Jeff gets the extra housing functioning. I need some hotel rooms open for patients. I crammed myself into practically a hot slot to make two guest rooms for patients. Even with the extra fees I get for that I’m anxious to dismantle them and get my own comfortable cubic back.

April had a sudden thought. “Maybe you should open an auxiliary clinic at Central. Heather is trying to get businesses to move in. Talk to her at least,” she suggested.

“I like it on Home. I hear the moon is still pretty rough. Nobody has any clubs or restaurants open yet. There’s still lots of bare tunnel walls and lack of retail. My customers tend to be high income for Earthies, and used to their little luxuries. Just like me.”

“I don’t mean for you to move there. Just set up a treatment center. You could even do all your evaluations here and send them to Central for the actual procedures. The difference in housing costs more than pays for the shuttle ride.”

“Oh! I suppose I could,” but he didn’t sound like he had any enthusiasm for it. “We haven’t had any problem with adverse reactions. And if we did I’m not sure what I could do to intervene any better than anybody else. I just like everything under my direct control. Chalk that up to my controlling personality,” Ames admitted.

“I think that’s useful in a business owner, to a degree,” April allowed. “But it limits the size and scope of your operation. There only so much you can personally oversee without delegating.”

“Yeah, the idea of somebody acting in my name… off on the moon, is kind of scary,” Jelly said. “How would you feel about having a procedure done by a nurse or technician? Because that’s why I called, to tell you I have a new mod if you are interested.”

“If it’s no more invasive than the others you’ve done for me I’d be fine with that. It’s not like going to China with a language barrier, and if they give you the wrong IV you may end up with gills and webbed hands,” April said.

Jelly grimaced. “And irreversible too. Or at least that’s the rumor.”

“So, what are you selling now? Telepathy? Chameleon skin with conscious control? It would be nice to be tartan plaid on demand, or have humming birds chasing each other around as the mood strikes.”

Jelly blinked and looked stunned, trying to visualize that.

“Alas, I’m afraid it is much more mundane and practical,” he admitted. “I studied people who sleep very little and function very well despite that. I was able to identify several contributing genes. It doesn’t allow you to function on as little sleep as the best of them, but it knocks off two or three hours of your optimum amount of sleep needed each night.”

“People actually spend money for that?” April asked, skeptical.

“Well of course! Just think what you can do with a couple extra hours a day.” He seemed upset she wasn’t as enthused about the idea as him.

“I suppose if you worked a shift job,” April allowed. “You have to be there and give them a set number of hours, so that would expand your own time.”

“Come on… have you never stopped reading a book because you were too sleepy to continue? Never left a fun party because you had to go home and go to bed? Surely even with your business life there are things you put off until tomorrow because you ran out of time today?” Jelly insisted.

“Maybe,” April agreed reluctantly. “But I enjoy my sleep too, and feeling recharged and ready to go in the morning after a good night’s sleep.”

““That’s the point,” Jelly said. “You still get that, but with less time invested. If I were selling it by the hour, instead of the ability all at once, I’d make a fortune. Busy people would buy their additional two hours a day at a steep rate.”

“You’re persuading me. What exactly is the ‘all at once’ rate? I might be a customer if the pay-back isn’t years and years forward.”

“A Solar and a quarter, and no quarantine needed after treatment, so you aren’t investing any time now. Just a half hour to come by and get a deciliter infused. If you were a semi-skilled shift worker you’d break even at your pay rate within the quarter,” Jelly said.

“OK, I’ll do it,” April decided. “And just have your tech do me. It’ll be good training for you.”

“Am I allowed to poke my head in and say hello?” Jelly asked.

“Only if you bring coffee,” April allowed.

“Fine. Come by any time,” Jelly invited. “We can do this in my office and not tie up a treatment room. But I’ll have the tech do the hands on,” he agreed, before she could object.

“Sometime tomorrow,” April promised. “I’ll ask Jeff if he wants it too. Bye.”

Jelly wasn’t offended when she disconnected abruptly. Just amused she no longer tried to negotiate a group deal at a lower price like before. A Solar and a quarter must not be so dear anymore.

*

Jonathan Hughes examined the access to his cabin critically. It hadn’t been much of a thoroughfare before, just two worn ruts from turning off the county dirt road. It never got used enough to kill the weeds between the two tire tracks. There was neither a mailbox nor a sign with a cute name like so many posted for their get-away cottage. Now, he’d made every effort to fill in the dips as far from the edge of the road as you could see. He’d piled the dirt a little higher than the surrounding area, knowing once they had a couple rains it would settle.

He didn’t want any visitors scouting for unused cottages, or worse, outright raiders and outlaws. Worse of all, officials looking to collect taxes they couldn’t pay. There were several other places free of trees where he could drive his truck onto the road. He didn’t expect to do that often, and he wouldn’t use the same place twice to leave permanent tracks. Indeed he intended to eventually obscure his tire ruts all the way to the cabin so they couldn’t be seen from the air.

The exit was still obvious to his eye. But he was standing still and knew what he was looking at. Somebody driving along would have to be looking mighty sharply to see it once it settled a bit. He’d put sod and a few small bushes on his fill. He decided he’d find a small tree and plant it right in the middle, soon. The same needed to be done at the cabin. It was set back in the trees but there was an open area in front that could be filled with young trees. Digging a big enough hole by hand was an all day job. He’d try to do a couple before the ground froze for the season.

His daughter and son-in-law hadn’t shown up in the two weeks since they’d arrived. If they were coming they’d better hurry. The leaves changing color higher up had been obvious when they arrived and now, two weeks later, the Aspen around the cabin were showing signs too. If they were walking and took too long the first snow could catch them. If they did show up things would be tight for food before spring, but then the extra hands would help. They could hunt and there was fishing a couple miles away. In the spring the younger people would be a big help gathering and planting carefully hidden gardens. He intended to do that in thin strips along the southern edge of wooded areas. Not in neat rectangles that would be visible from the air. He wished he had a greater variety of seed, but too late now.

From what little they could hear on the radio Jon didn’t expect to ever go back home. He doubted the Co-op, as such, would ever be operated again, and there was nothing else there for him. This was going to be home now, for better or for worse. He never expected to leave the county again. He was just glad his wife hadn’t gotten the idea to go searching for the kids. That would be a dangerous undertaking and likely futile, he was convinced. Circumstances could force them to take any number of routes, and the truth was they may have never started. They could easily pass each other or get into trouble and never make it back. Wouldn’t that be ironic if the kids showed up here, wondering where they were?

*

“Oh yeah. Sign me up,” Jeff said immediately when told about Jelly’s sleep reducer. April was a little irritated he didn’t pause and ask what the down side was to it. He certainly had for every other gene mod they had been offered. It must have shown on her face.

“What? You don’t like it? Are you going to take a pass on this one?”

“No. I’m going to get it. I just don’t understand why you guys are so enthused. It doesn’t matter how many hours a day you have, there’s always more to be done than the time available and you have to just set priorities and keep plugging away at it. It’s a little help I admit.”

“It’s a big help,” Jeff insisted, looking dismayed. “Look. An extra two hours a day is seven hundred thirty hours a year. That’s an extra month of working time tacked on a year.” April still had that polite neutral look that said she didn’t agree but wasn’t going to argue.

“Think of it this way,” Jeff invited. “I’m working on some really long range projects. Assuming everything else is equal then twelve years from now I’ll have a full year lead on any Earthie working in the same field. It can make the difference between who files the patents or brings something to market first. Well, unless I just use the extra time to play handball and watch video.”

“I sort of assumed you are off on a different tack, not directly competing with any Earthies,” April said, making a veering motion off to the side with her hand to illustrate.

“You’re sweet,” Jeff allowed, “but you give me too much credit. I’m not a great theoretical thinker. I don’t have any illusions that way. If I have any talent it’s integrating other people’s work. So depending on the level of their work… I’m never that far out ahead of the broad state of the art.”

“I’m not comfortable competing for everything,” April admitted. “People go a bit nuts on it. That’s why Earthie sports events look crazy to me. Yes, somebody has to win, but somebody has to lose too. You’d think from the way they act that they’d lost a war and their nation was being dissolved when they lose a football game. It creeps me out. I know competition is the reality we have to deal with, but I’d rather cooperate when it can be done. Competition can waste so much time and resources if you are both just racing to the same goal.”

“You’d think I’d have figured out that’s how you think by now, without you explicitly saying it, but I hadn’t,” Jeff admitted. “I agree, it’s nice when people can cooperate, but that not how a lot of things work. Even law is adversarial. Well, Earth law. I’m not sure how to characterize ours yet. But Earthies aren’t going to cooperate with us about anything important. Most of them would be laughing behind their hand at the idea. Of course a lot of Earth law and regulation give lip service to competition. They actually just want to maintain the status quo. Look at how their banking system has been treating us.

“Competition can be very beneficial if you’re not sure which approach is going to solve a problem. But only if you give it free rein. That is in fact why central planning fails so often. They pick a winner way too early, supposedly in the interests of efficiency, and back it to the bitter end no matter how badly it’s working.”

“I can see all that,” April agreed. “I just don’t like all the drama associated with it, and the bad behavior and cheating some losers display.”

“Yes… I hear what you are saying,” Jeff admitted. “I suspect that’s why I haven’t heard from the Brazilian, Mr. Weir. He’s probably worried I want to sabotage their efforts or at least gain some insight that will give me an advantage. Truth is I have nothing in progress that competes with him in any way. I said as much when I invited him to meet with us and have dinner. I indicated I simply wished to discuss his paper. No harm in that. It’s been out there for anyone to read a couple years now.”

“Jon told me he’s North American,” April informed Jeff.

“Oh, I suppose he might be worried about the political implications then. Collaborating with the enemy and all that sort of thing. It’s a wonder he feels safe to be here.”

Jeff got a thoughtful look. “Put the question out there where his partners are from and what their connections are also. To your people and Chen. If he’s the theory guy then they, or at least one of them must be the source of funding. He didn’t study elsewhere besides North America and Brazil?”

“I don’t think so. If anything he seems estranged from North America, but keeping a low profile. You notice he’s doing his research commercially in Brazil? I looked his firm up online and as far as I can tell it’s just him and two other guys in a partnership,” April said. “All closely held.”

“Sort of like us,” Jeff said, looking amused.

“If he’s going to be secretive, then I expect he might be cautious about testing this hardware he’s having made. We should be in a position to observe it,” April said frowning.

“Wow. Spying out trade secrets seems awfully competitive for somebody who doesn’t like that mind set,” Jeff teased.

“I said I prefer cooperation,” April explained. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to be stupid and ignore reality when it doesn’t please me.”

“Well, unless these fellows have a lot more money than I suspect, they can use the moon to shield their testing from Earth, but they won’t be able to hide it from us or anybody on the back side of the moon. Anywhere they can afford to test it we should be able to watch. They won’t have the funds to take it far out-system. Dave has some pilotless drones for quickly deploying satellites back to LEO. I’ll rent one and have Dave modify it to carry a sensor package clear of any obstructions and track their test vehicle when it’s deployed.”

“I wouldn’t mention we’re observing if you do get to talk to Weir,” April counseled.

“No, no need. I’m sure he’s nervous enough, knowing it’s far too public, and no help for it.”

*

“Have we secured the depots and military equipment in San Diego?” General Kilpatrick asked.

“Some,” Bellini said. He paused and his face said he was conflicted, and what he wasn’t saying wasn’t going to be pleasant.

“Don’t withhold bad news from me,” the General insisted. “Once we start down that road it only leads to disaster. Have I ever shot the messenger?” he demanded.

“No, but I’m unhappy I haven’t been able to do what was needed,” Bellini admitted. “I totally agreed every action we planned and intended was vital, but we simply didn’t have the resources, especially against time constraints. Some of which I didn’t anticipate.”

“You’re human,” Kilpatrick said. “But if you didn’t anticipate them be aware I didn’t either. You have the advantage of the reports, but I’m still waiting for you to detail how these tasks failed.” He seemed a bit irritated to have to beg for a briefing.

Bellini sagged a little from his usual stiff posture.

“Most of the warehouses and armories were guarded initially. My biggest error was in understanding how long that would be maintained. Some of the defenders had minimal field rations. In one case I know they had none. Those that did still depended on the local water supply, and only one commander had a couple water tankers and took the initiative to fill them by pumping from local supply before it failed.

“If the power outage had been limited to the north of LA we might have retained control. But the fact that the grid couldn’t isolate that area and the outage spread hour by hour was the key factor in this failure. It went all the way south through San Diego and the new suburbs that have spread south since the Mexican annexation. Talk about withholding bad news. I think the power grid was much more delicate and poised to crash than was ever admitted to us.

“There were all sorts of contingency plans for projecting force and its supply from bases to an external threat, but nobody anticipated the internal collapse of civilian supply and control around these assets, isolating them. The local police were the first to abandon their posts. They were not effectively managed and directed. In many cases they followed orders as long as the battery lasted in their personal radio.

“After that, chaos at the street level was far beyond anything they could control. With no idea how widespread it was, and no backup or resources such as transport for anyone they arrested… well, they took their transport home if they still had passable streets, or walked away and saw to their own families and friends as best they could. I can’t really blame them.

“The streets in many areas became impassable late on the second day or third morning when people decided the power wasn’t coming back on and the water failure was becoming wide spread. Since they crossed over to the opposite lanes when the outbound lanes got full, people fleeing a new area without power ran head on into people who had lost their power the day before. Then the roads were blocked by miles of gridlock nose to nose. The civilian authorities didn’t offer any useful guidance about what areas had power or which routes were open, because their emergency services simply repeated the false official position that it was a limited local earthquake over and over until their coms went down.

“Some areas had water towers that took awhile to empty and lose pressure without pumping. The firefighters couldn’t do their jobs when that happened and abandoned their efforts. The grid lock was widespread enough by them that their equipment was trapped on site or in a limited area bound by major highways.

“Forces guarding military assets off the major bases, particularly transport, were never large. Some weren’t even on site, but hastily called to duty when the power went down. As communication failed they found themselves in the same position as police. Two days without water or promises of relief left many convinced their position was untenable. Some small forces were guarding large facilities and soon were faced with groups trying to cut their fences and gain entry to loot. They were reluctant to fire on civilian mobs that outnumbered them.

“The fact commanders subordinate to us were still insisting the root event was an earthquake, when even the civilian population knew better, undercut trust. Some we could have relieved simply didn’t believe we were coming in the face of other obvious lies, and abandoned their posts early. When relief did arrive they found the easily transportable stores looted. One particularly troubling observation was that the mutineers left their uniforms behind, sometimes with the nametags ripped off and occasionally burned in a pile. This indicates to me they have no intention of reporting back anywhere or anytime again, and have a vested interest in joining an already hostile population so they are never brought to justice for abandoning their posts.”

Kilpatrick looked stunned.

“So how do we regain control of… basically all of Southern California?”

“That’s what I was really loath to report,” Bellini admitted. “We’re not, at least not anytime soon. In my opinion, if we try we will squander resources we need in the areas we still control. The possibility exists we could lose all control at a national level if we try to retake this vast area immediately. There are already large areas in the northern states significantly depopulated with very marginal civilian control.

“The fact we still have New York as a functioning city is critical, and the idea we could lose public confidence there terrifies me. Vancouver seems somewhat safer, but I’ve come to distrust my own analysis. If we start to see an exodus from New York and the densely populated Northeast we’ve lost the Union. We could be reduced to an effective area that approximates the old Confederacy, separated from our thinly populated areas in the north by a transcontinental band out of our effective control.” Bellini warned.

“So, you are suggesting we let Southern California remain a lawless area indefinitely?” Kilpatrick asked. He didn’t seem comfortable with that possibility.

“For at least several years,” Bellini said, forcefully. Gaining confidence now that the whole ugly picture was fully laid out. “The valley will lie fallow without repowered waterworks, it will be the first area we can reclaim by doing that. But everything below will have to wait. Including the Baja, all the way to the end of the peninsula. It’s mostly been a playground for the rich since the annexation anyway. There isn’t any significant industry there. It’s sufficiently isolated from the rest of Mexico for the contagion not to spread. Frankly, the whole area is going to be significantly depopulated. When we do retake it part of the reason we will be able to is that it will be almost empty, compared to now. Just controlling and resettling the few who do manage to get out will be a sufficient problem for us right now.”

“I worry the Mexicans may try to take advantage of this to become independent again, but with their old territory and most of California again. Maybe parts of Arizona and New Mexico too,” Kilpatrick said. The idea visibly distressed him.

“But not Texas?” Bellini asked.

“No, if there is chaos and border shifting I’d be more worried Texas might decide that it’s time to go it alone again. Of course that might mitigate any Mexican problem, because they’re likely to claim half of Northern Mexico too,” Kilpatrick said. “We have to plan how to dissuade the Texans from doing that if Mexico rebels.”

“If the Mexicans try to invade California before it depopulates, perhaps we should encourage Texas to deal with them,” Bellini mused. “They always have a significant faction pushing independence, but we’re stronger there than the Patriots. Between California and Texas, I believe Mexico would be effectively run through the meat grinder, and regret attempting an annexation. Regaining control of Mexico later should be a lot easier after they are diminished by both exercises.”

“Perhaps you are right, if we could survive Texan independence,” Kilpatrick pointed out. “I’d bet they would claim Oklahoma and chunks of other neighboring states if they left.”

“That would be a huge intrusion in our middle wouldn’t it?” Bellini allowed. “Let’s hope it never comes to that, or we’ll face much tougher choices than we have right now.”

The vision of potentially greater chaos seemed to help Kilpatrick decide. “All right. We salvage what we can from the uncontrolled areas, and conserve our resources. We do have to make sure an opposing authority isn’t allowed to consolidate power there when things settle down. Better to assert our control a little early than to wait too long and have it contested.”

“I’ll create a task force to watch for that danger and mitigate it,” Bellini promised.

Chapter 5

“Let’s take a stroll and get some supper,” Jeff suggested. “I’ve been sitting too long.”

“OK, the new cafeteria?” April asked. “I’ve only tried it a couple times.”

“Not this time, please. I have too much to do today. Messages I need to read in their entirety and replies to make. The day after tomorrow?” he suggested.

“Yes, but you have to tell the people that you have a dinner date, because there’ll be just as many badgering you tomorrow as today.”

“You’re probably right,” he admitted with a sigh. “And I promise I’ll keep my commitment to you just like I am these others today.”

“Done,” April agreed.

A man in work overalls with a tool pouch and a chunk of disconnected machinery on a push cart passed the other way. Whatever the piece was it had lots of copper tubing attached, rolled in a large coil. Hands full, he gave an exaggerated nod in greeting as he passed, and looked a little less grim than before.

“Do you know who that was?” April asked. “I nodded back to be polite, but I really can’t place the fellow.”

“You may have never met him,” Jeff said. “People know you. No really,” Jeff insisted when she made a face. “You’ve spoken in the Assembly quite a few times. Spoken about some controversial things others avoided. A few times you spoke clearly when others had no consensus and were speaking without any clear direction. People remember those things. You don’t like to hear it, but you are on the gossip boards, and some of that even leaks to Earth. To the irritation of Earthie authorities mostly. They rightly figure any publicity has some positive value. That’s why they don’t mention you themselves. But the coverage here is generally positive.”

“Maybe he was nodding at you,” April said.

“People nod and smile when I’m with you,” Jeff insisted. “If I’d been alone he might have made a ruder gesture.”

“Oh come on. If people hated you that much you’d never get to breakfast without a duel first.”

“Well, not that bad maybe, but people do like you better than me. On the gossip boards I get billing as your boyfriend. People don’t mention we’re business partners, at least not first. Business is sort of boring to most people. I’m afraid you are what the term celebrity was coined to describe. Not the sort we have now that depend on favorable press and a diligent publicist to promote them every day. Celebrities used to be actual interesting people who did things to create public interest. It wasn’t simply how outrageously they can act or dress, to call attention to themselves, or with whom they’ve slept.”

April frowned and scowled. “I’m not sure I understand. Give me an example.”

“OK, there was a fellow, Lindbergh, who flew across the Atlantic Ocean between the World War and the First Atomic War. People had flown around it in steps, but there was a prize offered to fly across. Well he did so, flying solo near six thousand kilometers to win $25,000.”

“American dollars?” April asked. Her face said that wasn’t much.

“Yes, but before years of inflation that was a lot more money. He wasn’t a particularly well known or an immensely wealthy person. He’d been a military aviator and mail pilot. But once he did this it caught the public imagination and he really did become a celebrity. He got awarded medals besides the prize money and people did things like name schools after him.

“It ended badly however. He had no idea how to deal with notoriety. Later his fame attracted some nut that killed his child, and he became a political pariah by taking a hard public stand against his country entering the next big war. The powers of the time were of an opposite mind, and he wasn’t allowed to resume his military service. He flew in combat as a civilian by being an aircraft factory rep. Quite a few people had to wink to allow that, which shows how respected he was. He didn’t have any idea about personal security or the practical limits of his personal power from his fame. It was kind of sad reading about it actually.”

“He didn’t get bodyguards and a safe home? I can’t imagine not having Gunny or Chen and his friends like Mackay on retainer,” April said.

“It was a different time. There wasn’t the sort of publicity we have now. Why, I read once that… not long before that time, the President of the United States could walk out of the White House and stroll down the street to buy a cigar without security or concern he’d be molested.”

“I don’t understand how that could be. Political assassins and rivals aside… they had to have mentally ill people just like we do now,” April said.

“I can’t say I understand it all myself,” Jeff admitted. “Yet here we are walking to a public cafeteria and you aren’t afraid for your life while you are well known. I suspect it was a different society then, just as Home is so different from North America now. Perhaps besides any real danger how much risk people would assume changed. How and what changed, and why, is more than I can claim to understand. I’m a bit of a businessman and a designer, not a historian or a sociologist.”

“I never aimed to be a celebrity,” April said. “Not even to be well known if there’s any significant difference. But I remember how much more difficult it was on Earth when I visited. I’ve tried to put you in a favorable light to people, but maybe I’m not doing you any favor.”

“Well if you can’t avoid it, I guess being a celebrity beats being notorious,” Jeff said.

They arrived at the cafeteria and got into selecting supper. But April was still thinking on all of it as they got their food and took it to a table.

*

They didn’t talk about public image and notoriety again once they had their food. The subject was played out and they mostly ate and acknowledged a few greetings from friends. They were near going back for a dessert when a big blond fellow stomped in with a scowl and questioned the fellow on the rear of the serving line. The man looked surprised, and not only replied, but turned and looked straight at them.

“Uh oh, the big Viking there just asked Mr. Holmes in line something and he directed the fellow to us, all but pointed rudely at us.”

“Well he’s not armed, at least not visibly, but he does look angry,” April noted.

“Be careful. He may be unarmed but he’s a big sucker. An Earthie for sure,” Jeff appraised him.

“Yeah, stupid hard soled shoes and a belt. Buttons on his shirt. You talk to him,” April requested. She put her hand down on her pistol, made sure it was free in the holster, and left her hand on her thigh, just in case.

She wasn’t forced to acknowledge him at all. He went straight to Jeff, slapped something down on the table in front of him, and demanded: “Explain that to me, Singh!”

Jeff confounded the angry man by not reacting to his anger. He obviously expected either anger or guilt. Instead Jeff took his butter knife and slid the little object closer. His clear spex turned silvery on the right as he had one lens magnify the offending object.

“Now that’s an ugly and inefficient design,” Jeff concluded quickly. It looked like a little silverfish, but was metallic and scorched and melted at one end and along the side a little.

“It’s not one of ours,” Jeff assured him.

“So you do admit having bugs?” the fellow asked, starting to run out of mad without being able to get a rise from Jeff, but still on the same stubborn track.

“Oh yes. We deploy them on Earth quite a bit. Not on Home. Too many people would have my head. But this isn’t one of ours. All those legs are just silly, needlessly complex when there are easier ways to get hyper-mobility and climbing vertical and inverted surfaces. It obviously got zapped by some sort of defenses or a bot killer with a discharge weapon. I’d never design one with a conducting body, much less legs that could be the path for a lethal short. It’s too heavy with that much metal too.”

“Then who would be bugging me if it isn’t you?” the man said, still in an accusing mode.

“My dear fellow, you have decided I am aware of all sorts of things because you are sure I’m guilty. You’re working backwards from that assumption, which leads to all sorts of false conclusions. You think I am interested in bugging you, or if not I must know what other parties would be interested in doing so. Just to demonstrate how badly this misleads you, please stop and consider this. I have no idea at all, who the bloody hell you are!” Jeff said the last part running thin on patience.

Anger slowly faded to dismay, and finally he just said, “Oh… “

“Run it through verification software if you don’t believe me. We could see by how you’re dressed you’re an Earthie. I know the legal restraints on it below. Nobody here gives a jolly fig if you use it,” Jeff invited him.

“I don’t even have that sort of program on my pad,” he admitted. “I’m Jim Weir. I spoke to you on com. You expressed interest in my old paper.”

“Yes, but you had the video off when I called, and academic papers don’t usually feature portraits of the authors,” Jeff pointed out. “I’m interested in the paper, but I didn’t really care what you look like at all. I suppose if I were interested enough to put spy bots onto you I’d have researched that, I’ll give you that. Please don’t be offended, but I really wasn’t interested deeply enough to hunt down a public image.”

“I believe you. I’m sorry I intruded,” he offered and straightened like he would leave.

“Before you march off, may I give you a small warning?” Jeff asked.

“Yes… ” Jim said, wary now that he’d provoked Jeff.

“There is no way I’d have touched that bot you just put down,” Jeff said. “Even if I thought it was fried. It might reorganize and bypass damaged areas and activate again. I’d as soon touch that creepy thing as get my chewing gum off the bottom of a public bench.”

“What would you have done then?” James asked.

“Oddly enough, I’ve been in that situation before,” Jeff revealed. “I flicked the little bot into a safe container with a knife. It self destructed, and we vacated the cubic in case the smoke was toxic and went to medical to be checked out. How did you kill this little fellow? If it were very good you shouldn’t have ever seen it.”

“It crawled into my larger work computer and shorted out the wireless board. Do you think I should go to your clinic?” James asked.

“Frankly, if it was weaponized, I think you’d be dead by now. I’ll ask the cafeteria people for a safe container to keep it. I’d just suggest you go in the restroom there and wash your hands.”

James nodded assent and trotted off to do that.

“Would you please ask somebody for a jar or bottle from the kitchen, and something to wipe the table?” Jeff asked April.

“What are you going to do?” April wanted to know.

“I’m going to sit right here and watch it,” Jeff said.

When James returned the bot was in a small glass jar, a relative rarity on Home, and Wanda was wiping the table with a disinfectant spray. She also took their dishes away rather than commingle them with the others on the exit rack. She said nothing but gave James a dirty look when she left. Enough so he noticed it.

“Pay no mind to Wanda,” April said, when James looked a bit sheepish at her glare. “She still gets crabby occasionally.”

“As compared to when?” James asked.

“Compared to before she got married,” April said. “It’s been good for her.”

“Do you want the… remains?” Jeff asked, gesturing at the jar.

“No, I’d just dispose of it. Do you want it?” James asked surprised.

“I have people who might learn something from it. I’ll have it couriered to Japan, to the folks who make our bots. It’s worth a shot.”

Jeff made an inviting gesture for James to sit if he wished. He looked around like he wasn’t sure. There was a light crowd of about forty people, and none looking now that the drama was over, so he sat down reluctantly.

“I was determined not to risk being associated with you,” James revealed. “But walking in and yelling at you in a public place sort of ruined that.”

“You mean because I’m a bloodthirsty monster?” Jeff asked.

James looked very uncomfortable. “That’s pretty much how you are labeled in the North American press, and the Europeans aren’t far behind. I might like to go back to North America some day, at least as a possibility. One video of us together could ruin that.”

“I can understand that,” Jeff said, graciously. “I won’t say nobody will take pix on their spex here. It isn’t likely, but you do get stringers for the gossip boards. If you’d feel more comfortable out of the public eye, we were done here anyway. If you go out to the elevators we’re going back to April’s apartment. We’ll be along in a few minutes and you can join us, rather than leave together, and we can chat a little.”

“Ah, is that OK with you, April?” James asked, although he’d never been introduced.

“Certainly. I knew Jeff had read your paper and didn’t fully understand it. You’re welcome to come chat and we’ll have some dessert and coffee there if you want also.”

“I’ll meet you at the elevators then, thanks.”

“I’ll see if they still have a whole pie they can spare,” April volunteered. “You know, if anybody took video they likely did it back when he was making a scene.”

“Yeah, but please don’t mention that to him. He seems settled down now,” Jeff said.

“It was nice of him to ask if he could come to my apartment,” April said. “Not that I mind you inviting him, but he doesn’t know us. It was surprising he’d think to ask when he was rattled.”

“I also assumed you’d speak up if you didn’t want him over,” Jeff said. “Thanks.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I wouldn’t be shy to speak up if I didn’t. I’d suggest your office instead.”

“And wouldn’t that give him an eyeful? I’d have to put everything away and turn all the screens off or put them on something safe. Thanks,” he repeated.

James got on the elevator with them, but still didn’t speak, probably because there were three other people riding along with them. He stayed quiet when they got off at April’s corridor and nobody was in sight. April was starting to wonder if he was having second thoughts. But he entered with them, still silent, rather than turn back at the last moment.

What April didn’t expect was his reaction inside. James was clearly astonished, his mouth actually falling open in surprise.

“This is when most Earthies tell me they have a bigger garage back home than my entire apartment,” April said, trying for a little tension breaking humor.

“Oh no. We looked into getting space for doing some fabrication ourselves and dropped the idea. Cheaper to have an established shop do it all than try to buy space at the prices today. I was astonished how large it is rather than the opposite,” James assured her. “And this is definitely bigger than a standard two car garage. I’ve seen a couple residences on Home already. They made a Tokyo efficiency look spacious.”

James turned, taking everything in carefully. He stood stiffly, still looking uncomfortable to be there. April was actually afraid he’d change his mind and leave if she invited him to sit and make himself comfortable. His stare returned to the large Lindsey Pennington drawing. He frowned, looking at it intently, then went closer to check the signature.

“I know this artist,” he said, pointing at it although it was the only art on that wall. “I don’t own any of her prints, they’re a bit dear for me, but I’ve seen them online. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one. In fact, I didn’t know she had any work this large.”

“Yes, she’s still more comfortable with smaller works,” April agreed, “but I commissioned that piece, it’s an original drawing not a print, so you won’t be seeing any copies of it. She made it at my request after we were both at the event it pictures. I think she did just fine in the larger format. She’s done a few more as large since, but I can understand why she avoids it. Just the fact it takes so much longer to finish. I doubt the larger ones pay her as well for the time put in them as her smaller work.”

You could practically hear the wheels turning in James head as he came to an understanding. He knew, as an intellectual exercise, that April must be emancipated, and wealthy. The huge cubic, well furnished, established that. He knew it, but she looked like a little kid, and it was hard to feel she was adult. All his experience spoke against it. He felt like her parents should show up any minute and demand to know who she’d let in. Somehow the personal nature of the drawing, the fact they shared admiration for the artist, drove a wedge in his thinking where the larger things like the apartment didn’t reach him on an emotional level.

April and Jeff said nothing, aware James was resolving some sort of conflict from his strained expression. They thought it was his concerns about business security and politics though, unaware he simply couldn’t bridge the cultural gap their age presented. He in turn regarded them. They were patiently waiting on him to reveal his thoughts. They were unnaturally poised and patient for their age. Well, April at least. He didn’t have as much trouble with Jeff because he just looked more adult. He suddenly realized part of his problem was they were obviously a couple, and she looked far too young for that by Earth standards, especially the increasingly puritanical North American values and laws. He’d had similar problems with different attitudes when he moved from North America to Brazil with its different culture. Still did on occasion, truth be told.

James was far from stupid. Once he understood the source of all his anxieties he could deal with them. The external transformation was surprising. James visibly relaxed, standing differently, and even smiled a little. “Why don’t we discuss my paper? I must warn you. I won’t talk about my business project and practical applications. But we can discuss the theory within the framework of the paper.”

Jeff was surprised. He’d decided James was going to politely refuse to have any discussion, make polite amends for falsely accusing him away from the public eye and leave quickly. He’d looked like he’d refuse to even sit when they first arrived, and now that hard attitude was gone.

“I’d like that. Why don’t you come sit with me on the other sofa, facing the screen. If we need to view the math we can put it up there,” Jeff suggested.

“I’ll make some coffee,” April volunteered. She wanted to get out of the way before she said something stupid to ruin this sudden shift. She’d take her time about it too.

When April returned with a carafe and mugs they were deep in conversation and didn’t even acknowledge her setting the tray before them. She said nothing and went back for pie. Returning with the pie broke their reverie enough they stopped. A lifted eyebrow from Jeff got a short nod from James and Jeff poured. That was good, that sort of casual communication told April they were getting on just fine.

James took a sip and was surprised. “Wow, does that take me back. That’s what my mother’s coffee tasted like twenty years ago.”

“I’d have thought with Brazil being a coffee producing country you’d have been enjoying quite good coffee living there,” Jeff said.

“Not for any reasonable amount of Reais,” James explained. “That was true even before the flu. If they can sell the good stuff for hard currency we never see it now. In fact the growers are recovering like everyone else after the flu. They want Australian dollars or Russian Rubles now. Before, they were actually importing low quality coffee for the domestic market, now it’s just plain hard to get any. What is this?”

“It’s half and half, Indonesian and Ethiopian,” April told him. “You’re company so I mixed the good Ethiopian stuff in. It’s still hard for us to get so we blend it to stretch it.”

“You have foreign exchange to use for luxuries?” James asked. “I had to buy Australian dollars at a horrible rate to come up here. Nobody wanted to deal with me in Reais or North American dollars.”

“We are fortunate to be doing enough trade to pay for many items like coffee in kind. We have pharmaceuticals and electronics. Our landing platform in the Pacific means a lot of our business goes through Australia so our exchange is heavily weighed to Australian dollars. Rubles, not so much. I had to do business with Russian banks when the Europeans and Americans cut us out of their settlements system. It isn’t something I’d care to do all the time.”

James laughed, the first honest laugh they’d heard out of the man. “Did you wash your hands after?”

“I was concerned about getting a hand back,” Jeff admitted. “I’d certainly count my fingers. I had to resort to having others deal with them for me. People they wouldn’t dare cross.”

“Says the man with nuclear weapons, who doesn’t seem afraid to use them. Who could they possibly be more afraid of crossing than you?” James asked.

“They’re not exactly nuclear weapons in the sense most people think,” Jeff protested. “The big ones are fusion weapons, but without a fission kernel to initiate them. It makes a great deal of difference that they leave no fallout or residual radiation. They’re pretty useless for anything subtle. Do you bomb an entire city because a couple bankers in it cheated you? No, I had their Mafia run my deal for me. They are already there, and if you do them dirty the response is just as devastating, but much more selectively targeted.”

“Just when I start to relax and feel like you guys are just normal people you say something bizarre again. Nobody just admits to working with the Mafia.”

“Well, if the Earthie banks hadn’t cut us off for no reason we wouldn’t have needed to do so. I don’t like some of the things they do, but you could say the same of the Earthie governments, and we still do business with them too. If you look at it from our vantage the Mafia at least delivered on what they promised and the North Americans and Europeans cut us off for little more than simple spite. So who are the bigger crooks?” Jeff asked. “There wasn’t anybody nice with whom to do business.”

“Saying that would put your butt in prison now in North America!” James said.

“And that’s why you won’t see me anywhere near North America,” Jeff assured him.

“His idea of near and mine aren’t even close to each other,” April said, upset. “I don’t want him to go inside L1. Just a few weeks ago they tried to shoot his butt off, clear out in the Pacific, far away from being any possible threat to North America. You just never know when they are going to try to take a pot-shot at you.”

“I believe I heard about that,” James admitted, looking uncomfortable.

“Yes, but I’m sure the Earthie news fed you a crock of crap about it,” April said.

“Feel free to tell me the straight stuff from your perspective,” James invited. He picked up his pie to finish, and sat back against the cushions fully, to show he was listening.

“It’s not complicated. The factions running North America right now repudiated our old treaty, but they haven’t been aggressively initiating hostilities, even though they claim we’re still at war. But as soon as Jeff is aboard a shuttle landing at our ship in the Pacific all of a sudden we’re belligerents. They shot at him on approach and I called up and objected. I plainly told them if they didn’t stop I’d stop them. They shot a second time. I just did what I promised before the idiots at Vandenberg fired a third time.”

“I’m not comfortable with you having that much power at your disposal,” James admitted. “With any individual having that much power.”

“But you are OK with them having the power to blow Jeff out of the sky on a whim? Why? Because they are nameless and faceless, but real honest to God authorities? An individual still decides to use their weapons, the process merely hides who it is from you. I can assure you that you will never be in as much danger from me as them. You have to really work hard to provoke me to violence,” April said.

“I don’t have a good answer to that,” James admitted.

“It’s probably a radical new thought. I’ll give you some time to think on it,” April allowed.

“I know this is apple,” James said, desperate to change the subject, “but it’s unlike any apple pie I’ve ever had before.”

“It’s what the Amish call schnitz pie, made from dried apples. It’s only been recently we got a few fresh apple pies. The first time I tried regular apple pie I thought of it as apple pie lite. The drying concentrates the flavor. We simply couldn’t afford to lift food that wasn’t dehydrated. But now all the old hands are accustomed to this sort and prefer it. Would you like another piece? I bought the whole pie.”

“No thank you. It’s good but very rich. Another cup of coffee would be very nice though if you have any left.”

“There’s maybe a mug,” April said, gathering the pie dishes up. “But I’d like more too, so I’ll start another pot.”

James didn’t object out of false politeness. April liked that about him.

When she returned they had some math up on the screen and were in a deep discussion. April sat beside James on the other side from Jeff and slid the refreshed coffee tray over in front of James. She occasionally heard a bit that made sense, but most of it was outside her expertise.

“I think I’m following your reasoning,” Jeff said, “but why isn’t there any factor in the equations for gravity? It seems necessary.”

“It is necessary,” James agreed, “but it’s a constant. The velocity and charge are variables. I just left out the constant because it zeros out anyway. If it’s understood why clutter up the notation with it?”

James was turned to Jeff a bit. Looking across his shoulder April saw Jeff’s pupils dilate and he got that goofy look that said he was having an epiphany. She was terrified the next thing out of his mouth would be a denial that gravity was a constant.

Using some tech his mother created, Jeff had been very successfully making gravity a variable for a couple years. They had a version of it reducing perceived acceleration in their ships for some time now, and it was proprietary.

April lifted her head sharply and glared at Jeff over James shoulder. Fortunately it broke through his reverie, and he looked startled. April sternly shook her head no, and Jeff broke out of the concentration and saw the potential trap he was laying for himself.

“I… Oh, I see it now,” Jeff said.

“Great! That’s nice when it all comes together isn’t it?” James asked. “But that’s the limit to what I can tell you. Beyond this we leave theory and get into application so we must stop.” He looked happy and poured that second cup of coffee from the carafe April had brought.

“That’s entirely OK,” Jeff allowed. “I understand it all now.”

James nodded agreement, but April doubted he took Jeff’s meaning the same way she did. Jeff wasn’t acknowledging James’ security concerns. She was sure Jeff meant he literally understood it all, in a flash. Far more than James would have wanted, and possibly beyond James own understanding.

They spoke for nearly another hour, James asking questions about Home, and April being patient. She realized if they changed their demeanor, and broke the visit off, James would look back on it and realize something critical happened. He was extremely intelligent and seemed well socialized despite that. Only after he firmly turned down another piece of pie again, did he decide to call it a night. He insisted he could find his way back without their help and just smiled when April pressed the remnants of the pie on him at the door. What a relief it was when it closed.

“You got the whole thing for us didn’t you?” April asked the instant it closed.

Jeff looked terribly tired, but he nodded yes.

“Once I really understood the theory it became obvious how he’d apply it. I’d bet anything on that. But given we don’t have the same constraints it opens up a lot of different possibilities. I’ll tell you tomorrow, I’m beat, and it’s not easy stuff to explain. Let’s just go to bed for now.”

“OK, but don’t you dare die in your sleep!” April ordered him.

“I hadn’t planned on it, but you can sit up and listen to me breathe if you want,” Jeff invited.

Chapter 6

The man had a plastic vuvuzela like some idiots took to sporting events, and blew a flat nasty raspberry with the cheap yellow horn. Jon hadn’t expected to see anybody at the cabin once there was any snow on the ground at all, but the fellow had a horse that seemed to deal with it well. When Jonathan went to the window to look the fellow seemed impatient for a response and gave another blast.

The horse he was sitting on just twitched its ears so he must be used to it. Jon had never seen a horse with a thick winter coat. The man was being cautious, not aggressive, and stayed back well over a hundred meters away. That was smart. He wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a bandit.

Jonathan told his wife to cover him while he walked out to talk to the man. She was a fair enough shot to do that. She’d watch him through the scope, dialed back to the weakest magnification from well inside the door where she’d be in shadow.

The man would probably know he was in somebody’s sights when Jon left the door cracked open, wasting the cabin heat. Either that or he’d have to assume it was a bluff with an empty cabin. That would be a foolish conclusion on which to bet your life. Any inquiry about how many in his household would be a warning sign too, and quickly terminate their conversation.

He looked the fellow over with binoculars and then set them on the table before going out. They were a treasure and it was best not to advertise your wealth now. He’d seen the butt of a rifle sticking up from a scabbard. Something old fashioned with polished wood and a metal butt plate. The man had on a heavy jacket with the collar up. He might have a pistol but it wouldn’t be quickly accessible.

The man kept both his hands on the saddle horn, reins loose, and the horse stood patiently without any fuss. Jonathan walked out to him at a normal pace. He looked all around and back on each side of the house. If he had to run in snow he didn’t want to start winded. The man wasn’t as old as he’d thought at first. His face was tanned and Jon wasn’t used to beards. He’d have been more comfortable with somebody his own age. This fellow was in his early thirties.

“I’m Victor of the Foy family,” he said when Jonathan came to a stop. “You go downhill to the northwest until you hit a stream. Go uphill and you’ll pass an abandoned cabin in rough shape. We’re another mile and a little more past it. About seven miles in all from here. We have a dinner bell on a post by the stream for folks to announce themselves.”

“We’re the Hughes,” Jon said. “That’s a good idea about the bell. We don’t have a bell but I’ll improvise a gong or something. What sort of business are you about?”

“Folks seem to be settling down. There were a few people who lived hereabouts all year long. Mostly retired. And those who could reach their property after things went all to hell seem to have made it. I don’t expect a whole lot more to show up. Some weren’t the owners of record, but that’s no concern of mine. There was one case where folks arrived to find squatters and they shot it out. We have two of the kids who survived that in our family now. I was told of another case where they came to an agreement and allied.

“I’m taking a census for our own use. I’m going to hold it close, and I’ll burn it before I let it fall in the wrong hands. But in maybe another year, if it looks safe to publish, I’ll be back and have a map for you of where everybody lives in about a forty kilometer radius. If you don’t want to be added just say so, but if you aren’t on it you don’t get a copy either.”

“Is there a cost involved?” Jon asked.

“Nope. We hope to get some trading going though. If you have a skill or intend to make something it’s a way to let people know. I have one lady who intends to produce wool and woolen goods. She’s what you’d have called a hobby farmer, and it all depends on increasing the size of her flock and keeping them safe from the coyotes. Got another fellow who has a decent metal working shop. There’s also a woman who keeps bees. You have any specialty?”

“I’m a farmer, a real trained one with a degree, not a hobbyist. I can provide expert advice and a lot of practical lessons on how to propagate plants and keep the lines of cultivars pure. I’d be happy to trade seed for varieties I don’t have.”

“You sound like you’re saying you’re in then,” Vic said.

“Yes, as long as you have the sense not to supply it to somebody who will use it as a treasure map.”

“That’s a danger to me too. That why I am looking at the next spring. This spring is too early. We have satellite com and get good weather reports still. I’m sure I have a three day spell we won’t get any snow right now. This is probably the last week I’ll be able to go out, even on horseback, before the deep snow sets in. About late May I hope to send a young man out further than I can go now.”

Jon nodded approval. “I notice you didn’t come in by the road.”

“The roads are still dangerous. There’s a road the other side of us. We have maps and avoid the roads. Some people have dynamited the hill side and brought it down to block the road off to vehicular traffic. I had to beg a fellow not to take a bridge out and just do something less permanent. I don’t know when we’d ever be able to rebuild it.”

“Is there any official presence at all?” Jon asked. “Any police or military?”

“Nope. The county Sheriff quit when it was obvious he wasn’t going to be paid. Even if there were enough people to pay him in kind we don’t have the transport to get it to him yet. He’s not of much use to us if we can’t call and he has no way to come. When we breed some more horses it’ll help. Horses breed faster than people so they’ll catch up.”

“I was actually more concerned somebody would show up demanding their property tax. But when it was settled out here they had sheriffs. I suppose somebody had to ride into town to fetch him,” Jon speculated. “I don’t suppose you have anybody who can actually make radios?”

“No, but I’ve got a young guy who says he can make telephones if we can get him enough wire. Maybe half the homes near main roads have power wire strung we can use. Some can be cannibalized from other places. That’s a couple years out though,” Foy said.

“You think things will stay like this for years?” Jon asked.

“Up here? Yeah. They’ll likely take back control of the cities much faster. Better to plan on that, and be on the safe side, than wait for somebody else to fix things and be disappointed. What else you got to do but get on with life?” Vic Foy asked wryly.

Jon just tilted his head to concede the point.

“Is there anything you need?” Vic asked. “No idea when we’ll have access to anything, but I’m making a list of folks who need medicine or glasses. If it’s anything real serious they’re just out of luck. But I’m still making a list.”

“No. We’re fortunate that way. I suspect people will learn to use herbs and such again.”

“Then you’ll probably see me or one of my adopted boys around late May or early June. We’ll be looking to survey to the southeast of here.”

“Hopefully we’ll be here. There’s a couple with a young girl who might be trying to come here, but they had a longer way to go than us. Just be aware,” Jon said.

“I’ll keep an eye out and know it’s OK to admit you are here, if they turn up and ask after you by name.”

“Thanks, until spring then,” Jon agreed.

Foy clicked his tongue at the horse and pressed with his knee, ignoring the reins. It turned back the way they’d come, highstepping a little because of the snow.

*

Jeff was up before April and sitting looking at Jim Weir’s math again on the screen while he sipped coffee.

“I called Dave and informed him of some changes to our sensor drone. I saw we needed to add some instrumentation after speaking with James last night. He asked me when I needed it, and I told him before the drone is done for James Weir’s company. I might have been too honest. He kind of gave me the old stink eye, and was slow answering, but in the end he agreed. I thank you for the social things you’ve taught me,” Jeff told April. “Once upon a time I’d have started babbling, and said something stupid to give him a reason to turn me down. I’ve learned enough now that I just let him stare at me and think on it.”

“I’m sure he already knew exactly what we’re building it to do, “April said, “but that got one uncomfortable step closer to making him acknowledge it. I don’t blame him for being cautious. If he starts getting between his customers’ interests it could damage his business.”

“So I did right not to try to explain?” Jeff asked.

“Absolutely. If you’d said why we need it before Weir it could have made him a party to spying on them in his mind. If you’d tried to unlink them and back off he’d have felt you were being deceptive. In my opinion you did just right,” April assured him.

“I’m going to need to build a test drone of our own soon,” Jeff revealed. “Quite different, and a lot more expensive than this sensor platform. I’ll need some of my mother’s special material. I doubt I can get any ahead of our scheduled allotment, so I may have to dismantle a fusion weapon.

“You wanted to know what I figured out about their test. “I’m almost a hundred percent sure their drone is going to be a very light design with minimal redundancy, and will boost to an unusually high velocity, and then… disappear.”

“How is it going to disappear?” April asked.

“I’m not sure,” Jeff admitted. “I doubt he knows either. It might do it quietly, or it could be spectacular. It’s a new thing, doing it with a macroscopic object. If he knew exactly what to expect he wouldn’t be building a special purpose drone to test the process. And seeing his test is valuable because it will give me an idea what to expect when we do a similar test.”

“This isn’t something you could do with a manned ship?” April asked.

“April, if it does what he thinks, and what I think, now that he’s tutored me on his paper, it’s going away, but it’s not coming back. You don’t want to be aboard.”

“Oh, how far away?” April asked, starting to get the drift of it.

“I assume he’s going to point it at a nearby star system. The math favors both nearness and mass, but distance will be a bigger factor than mass, just because of how this universe is made. I’d expect it will materialize in the target star system, but nobody will be there to observe. Will it emerge intact or as a bunch of disassembled particles? How close to the star will it emerge? Does it retain its velocity, and if not, where does the energy go? For all I know it may emerge at rest relative to the target mass and blow up to dissipate the energy. I have no clue how it will behave at this point.”

“That would be useless,” April said. “Even if it doesn’t go >POOF< who’d want to do a one way ride not knowing what you’d find there?”

“I can just about guarantee you could find volunteers,” Jeff said. “There’s no shortage of crazy people. Or you could do like Jelly did testing some of his gene mods, hire somebody with a terminal disease who has little to lose and needs to provide financially for his family. Right now we could send something to the Centauri star system and it would take less than five years to get a report back if it arrived whole. Trouble is, the sort of transmitter we could detect back here is still too big and heavy send on one of these probes.”

“But it’s still worth doing?” April asked.

“Yes. This drone will be a throw away. If we do one, it could easily be a loss too. It may take a few tries. But it’s a proof of concept and a step towards one that will make it back,” Jeff said.

“OK, you didn’t make that clear,” April complained.

“The drives we have right now aren’t efficient enough to get up to the speed needed to give us a high probability of a quantum transition, and then turn around and build the same speed back up without refueling,” Jeff explained.

“But you think we can build something sufficient, eventually?” April asked.

“Yes, the physics is there, just not the engineering. Do you remember a few years back I mentioned I wanted to be able to produce tritium? This is why. You can get four times the power out of a deuterium - tritium reaction as what we are using now. Or a helium3 reaction is fine too, and that is the decay product of tritium. I still can’t make it in volume.”

“I remember you said something about it when you and Heather were feeding foils in the fabricator boxes,” April said, waving her hand loosely to show it was a vague memory.

“That’s right. I knew we’d need the process someday,” Jeff said.

“If your drone has all its velocity when it enters the other system why waste it?” April asked. “Make it do a loop around the star like a comet and come back.”

“I’m not sure our guidance design is up to that right now for a robotic vehicle, but it’s certainly a better possibility than trying to brake to a stop and reverse back up to full speed. We’ll very likely have to build a robotic autopilot that can deal with planets or lesser debris, navigating around a strange star system. It will be challenging to have an AI do that. Space is mostly empty, but I wouldn’t want to bet an expensive probe on a blind shot. One thing at a time however. Of course, all that is moot if this drone doesn’t disappear.”

“OK, but it never hurts to think ahead,” April insisted.

*

Jared Wilkes relaxed and sipped his espresso. The Cuban coffee was much better than any he’d been able to buy in Houston for the last couple years. The view was lovely, looking at Havana harbor from the table of a small cafe. The harbor had been cleaned up in recent years and the waterfront near the old town gentrified and aimed at tourism. It was almost like a vacation to visit here, but one he could never afford on his own. The Argentine manufacturer who produced the majority of the electronics for his company’s security systems used to come visit him in his Houston office. Now their rep found she couldn’t get a visa to do business in North America.

This was just one of a series of inconveniences that seemed aimed at putting them out of business. Meeting here was a compromise since she had other accounts to visit on the island.

Jared getting permission to visit Argentina would be slightly less expensive, but much more difficult politically.

Cuba also seemed a safer place to do business than the surveillance environment in their own countries. The street cameras here were crude and visible. Industrial espionage at a much lower level, and their customs agents unsophisticated. Jared carried a cheap computer with him that had little more than the bare operating system, suitable for school children. It was cheaper to bring than to buy locally. The material he would show Mía resided on a server in Switzerland, and the passwords existed in his head alone. If it was seized returning they’d get nothing off it. The memory was disabled and all his work would be done on a disposable external drive he’d destroy.

The sort of systems Jared’s company sold were not legally required to provide a government back door. They were aimed at securing areas or building and only transmitted data incidental to that purpose, but several agencies craved being able to get around them to gain physical access. People did things like keep stand alone computers unattached to any network, and there was no other way to get to them but by physical entry. Their products were an impedance to that. They intended to stay in business as long as possible, but it was getting harder. Last year they’d refused to hire someone who they suspected was a government agent. Then that person seemed to have very deep pockets to sue them for discrimination.

He’d been told gruffly this morning that he could not entertain Mía in his hotel room by the desk clerk, who was sure they had an entirely different sort of business in mind. Cuba was, if anything, more straight laced than North America. At least for public appearances. The hotel restaurant was depressing and expensive. Also one of the few places here that might be bugged. The bar was also full of locals who harbored similar thoughts about any woman who’d come to a hotel bar. The looks they received drove them to find someplace else.

The cafe, was picked at random, and had pleasant tables outside. The inside was decent enough if the weather made them retreat. It had a high rail around the serving area to discourage street people from cutting through and snatching the patrons phones or grabbing the leftover food when someone got up to leave. Best they enjoy it, because they wouldn’t use it again and establish a pattern.

They talked design issues and economics, which led to the problem of fluctuating exchange rates and currency controls.

“We’ve been getting a few of these offered in payment from our Australian accounts,” Jared said, “Since you need gold for some of your electrical contacts and it’s gotten so hard to obtain I thought we’d offer it.”

“What is this?” the manufacturer’s rep asked suspiciously. It looked like a fold over business card.

“It’s called a bit. I got them from an Australian fellow who was on Home to do some business. He got them in change while he was staying there. I thought you might be interested because you told us a couple months back you’d accept payment in gold. It’s not bullion, but it’s convertible.”

The rep turned it over and made a show of giving it a little shake with the fold open and down.

“No gold,” she concluded.

“Of course not. It’s a certificate for a hundredth of a gram. It wouldn’t be practical to attach such a small amount of gold to it. How would you do it? Print on it with gold leaf? There’d be no way to check on purity, weigh it or keep somebody from simply rubbing some off. But they’ll redeem them in gold if you present a hundred of them at a time.”

“I’d rather have bar or coin,” Mía said, skeptically.

“Sure, but this travels through customs without arousing interest. You have an import license don’t you? We can’t legally redeem it and then pay you but we can use it for partial payment.”

“And we assume the risk if it isn’t any good.”

“Less risk than taking my North American dollar, I’m sorry to say,” Jared told her.

She did one slow blink, and kindly didn’t disagree with him.

“If you worry about their stability research the Private Bank of Home and The System Trade Bank. They are the issuers,” Jared said.

“I thought the spacers were rich,” Mía objected. “This seems like a cumbersome small denomination.”

“They invented it to take the place of coins,” Jarad said, “except they sort of reversed things. They use these certificates for small change and coins for larger amounts. They issue a one Solar coin that’s twenty five grams of gold or platinum.”

“And that’s too big… for everyday commerce,” she hastened to add. “Though our factory would be happy to get a couple a week. Last year we had so much trouble getting gold we set up an operation to buy people’s jewelry for scrap. Things have gotten a little better since.”

“Take that and show your people, if you want them let me know. It’s unusual to be able to obtain these and we’ve let him know we’d welcome more. I still don’t expect to see many.”

“Gresham’s Law?” Mía asked.

“Exactly. I figure most people will simply hoard them. Who knows what a dollar will be tomorrow? But a gram is a gram and they aren’t stupid enough to start changing that… I hope.”

Chapter 7

“Sweetie, I’d like you to come by my apartment when you get a chance,” her grandpa asked. “I’m packing and sorting things, and I’d like you to see if you want any of it before it goes in the charity bin.”

“Why do that?” April asked. “You could put it in storage if you want to let Mom and Dad use the room while you’re gone.”

“I’m letting them have it permanently, to use or merge into their cubic as it suites them. The storage fees would quickly be more than the stuff is worth. I’ll be gone years and no hard date to return. If I come back I’ll have the means to buy a place of my own. If I don’t clear everything out, I know your mother, she’ll hesitate to tear down the partitions and do what she pleases with it.”

All April really heard was, “If I come back.” For some reason that rattled her more than his previous announcement he was leaving. This suggested she might never see him again.

“Honey… You don’t need to look like that. I haven’t died. Projects don’t last forever. This job will end and I’ll go on to something else. I can visit, or for that matter you can visit wherever I am. I expect that will be getting easier all the time, and I intend to try to work against this isolationist attitude the Martians have. Are you absolutely set on staying on Home all your life?” Gramps asked.

“I’m content here for now,” April said, defensively. “Jeff and I have said maybe we’ll have to join Heather eventually for economic reasons. But even then Jeff would keep an office here. It’s true Home is a lot different than just a couple years ago, but I still like it.”

“I’m a bit bored with it, but look how many more years I’ve been here than you,” Happy reminded her. “It was interesting building it, and I’ve had plenty to do until recently. Now though, there’s no particular cause I wish to promote or business I’d care to start. I’m not ready to sit around sucking my gums and boring people with tales of the olden days.”

That made April smile. She couldn’t imagine her grandpa like that.

“I can come over now if you want.”

“OK, but would you swing by the cafeteria and grab a couple sandwiches,” Happy asked. “I want to keep at this and maybe get it done today.”

“I’ll do that, and be there in a half hour or so,” April promised.

When she came out of the cafeteria she ducked in Zack’s chandlery. He carried a lot of fancy foodstuffs the cafeteria didn’t. Candy and fresh fruit and liquor. She got four bottles of Negro Modelo - in glass bottles, not the plastic ones Happy made jokes about. It cost half again what the special light weight ones cost. It even had steel pry off caps, not aluminum twist off versions. They were four bits, or three and a half bits a bottle if you bought four, but April knew it was her grandpa’s favorite.

It would probably be twice the price if things hadn’t normalized until there was such a thing as standby freight again. A shuttle loaded to within a kilogram, and if the load was short the loadmaster might toss two bottles of beer and somebody’s t-shirt in from the standby bin. April marked almost everything she ordered to be sent standby. She didn’t understand why people who could afford it a lot less than she could demanded instant gratification.

*

Happy was sitting in a the middle of a mess when she arrived. He only had the one desk chair so April sat on the floor between him and the charity pile, which was the largest. Spacers were almost compulsively neat, so the disorder made her a little uncomfortable. One explanation she’d heard suggested was that it was because loose items could become dangerous missiles under acceleration. That might have made sense at one time, but there were people born on Home who’d never served on a ship, and who were just as fanatical about stowing things away.

Home itself was so massive and fragile, especially now that they had a third ring, that it would take a very gentle and calculated acceleration to significantly alter its orbit. Indeed their previous move from Low Earth Orbit out past the moon to L2 would take months more than it had before with just two rings. April knew they made occasional corrections, but she’d never felt one. You might be able to tell one was happening with a plumb-bob hanging from the overhead and a bulls-eye underneath it. But you’d never have to worry about your coffee sloshing out of your mug when they moved.

The keep pile had several of the brighter Hawaiian shirts Happy favored. A few of them were on the charity pile. April had her doubts how quickly they’d be snapped up. There were two coffee mugs that were keepers. One from his Mitsubishi retirement, and another with a military emblem on it that had crossed swords over a black wedge shape. A knit hat in seven or eight colors was a keeper. Happy explained it matched anything or nothing.

Quite a few items provoked a smile or a frown a few required a story so they were nearing supper time with quite a lot to go. Happy refused to explain the military mug, but kept and discussed his Mars mission patch. Spacers didn’t normally accumulate much in the way of physical possessions, but it was surprising how many little items you could lay on the palm of your hand Happy owned.

April had started her spex recording the process and conversation while they were still eating lunch. She hadn’t asked permission but was very glad she’d done that. Some of the stories about building M3 were things she’d never heard until some keepsake triggered them. She had one of the beers and nursed it along. The others probably helped lubricate Happy’s story telling.

A double size Snickers candy bar, hard as a rock inside its pristine wrapper, got Happy started on the uncertainty of meals during the early construction, or at least doubt if they’d actually be edible. Workers always had a backup. One cook in particular had been so bad the workers threatened to stay in their barracks and take a strike day if he cooked supper again. It was so bad one of the supervisors took over and cooked instead. He had to agree the man could burn water trying to make tea.

April had a small pile of her own now of things she remembered from her childhood and things she didn’t want to see given to strangers. Most of no particular value except sentiment. Happy was past elbow deep in a narrow storage cubby and surprised her by pulling out a pressure suit helmet. Then he reached in again almost arm’s length deep and pulled out another.

Her astonishment must have shown because Happy looked a little sheepish.

“I haven’t had these out in a long time, I just kept putting things in on top of them. It’s probably been ten years since I’ve seen them.”

“They’re art!” April exclaimed. “I had no idea anybody did this.”

“All the construction workers wear color coded now,” Happy said. “White for ordinary workers. Yellow for supervisors. Bright blue for anybody who rigs or activates explosives. Red for EMS. If they bring out a new guy he has to wear a reflective band attached for at least thirty days. After that it’s up to his supervisor to say when he knows what he is doing enough to forgo it. If they get a big wheel from the company or a politician who has to be watched closely so they don’t kill themselves, they paint a helmet green for him. And they all have a number stenciled across the back.”

“But you guys used these for work?” April asked. The one was painted very convincingly as a knights helm. Convincing enough to make the near spherical helmet look cylindrical. The other had a lady of ample proportions on each side, completely naked but posed so that all the vital areas were concealed. One woman had a zero G counter-force power wrench to aid in that task, and the other had an old fashioned kit for explosive rivets and bolt headers open and the crimp tool floating away. But they were reaching out and clasped hands across the back of the helmet.

“Yeah, it worked fine then, because there were so few of us everybody knew everyone else on the crew. If your radio went out and you waved and tapped your ear one of the other guys would call it in without going over close to see who it was. They didn’t have a system to color code or even put on numbers big enough to read from any distance at first. So we took matters into our own hands.”

“So what happened? Did you ask for a better system or did it get to where there were too many Beam Dogs for you to know each other to force a change?” April asked.

Happy sighed. “You are a very bright young woman, but you still underestimate the depth of pettiness and stupidity a bureaucracy can display.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. I just blew a North American missile base clean off the map a few days ago because they were too full of themselves to listen when I told them to stop shooting or I’d stop them.”

“OK, maybe you have a point there. In the case of the helmets at least nobody was killed. But they didn’t supersede our ad-hoc system for the sake of safety. What actually happened is that a crew came up and did a documentary about us building the hab. When the editors saw some of the designs, Charles’ helmet there in particular,” he said pointing at the nudes, “They had a fit.”

“Remember, this was when North America was in a big resurgence of cleaning up public morality. When I first came up here to work, you could still wear short sleeves in restaurants and movie theaters. People wore very skimpy bathing suits on the beach or even at hotel swimming pools. Boys didn’t have to wear a top at all swimming.”

At April’s raised eyebrows Happy just invited her to search European or South American sources of the era. The North American sites were all censored. So much so a search wouldn’t return much in the way of images of beachgoers or resorts mid-century.

“They altered the images to remove all the offensive designs,” Happy said. “It wasn’t the very best job, but good enough for the public. Since we knew what things were really supposed to look like in unfiltered sunlight it looked fake to us. It wasn’t long after they made us dump the custom paint jobs and go to the sort of system they should have had from the start.”

“Poor Charles bore the brunt of it since his ladies were what pushed them over the edge to censor all the private designs. They fined him twenty thousand dollars to replace the helmet, because there was no way to strip the paint off the thin composite without damaging it. They refused to just paint it over. When he retired and returned to Earth he was afraid to take it back with him. They’d probably have prosecuted him for owning it, so I saved it. The helm was mine, and I was very proud of it at the time.”

“Why didn’t I ever hear this story?” April asked.

“Well, it isn’t the sort of story you tell a seven or eight year old. You wouldn’t have understood it, or all the politics and social things behind it. Even though the paintings don’t embarrass me, they aren’t the sort of thing you want to explain to little kids. You’ve been grown up enough to understand it all for awhile, but they’ve been stuffed in the storage cubby for years and I never thought about them until now.”

“They remind me of pictures I’ve seen of nose art on old warplanes,” April said.

“It probably springs from the same urges. Done in the field by people who aren’t great artists, but capable draftsmen. These old things can’t even fit on modern suits. The lock tabs are all wrong. I’ll just put them in the recycle pile for the metal. They’re not only huge, they mass over a kilo each. My mass allowance for Mars will be tight.”

“No! I want them,” April insisted, and took them carefully, before he might toss them on the scrap pile and mar them. “These are history. We’re going to have a museum some day. On the moon if not here. This is exactly the sort of thing we’ll need. I hate to think of all of it we’ve already tossed away.”

“If you’re interested, I have a couple old memory modules. They have hours and hours of suit time recorded, both audio and helmet camera. There will be lots of shots of the old helmets and video of us creating helmet talk. Of course you can see the hab being assembled too, but it’s strictly linear with lots of boring hours and close-ups of common work. It isn’t a slick production like folks expect now.”

“Please, I’d very much like that. I know somebody else who would want to see them too. I’m sure Lindsey will do some drawings from them if I show her.”

“OK, I think they’re in the next cubby, under the helmets… “

*

“Dave says the instrument drone is ready,” Jeff said. “I think for about three times the price we’re paying for a rental we could have bought it outright.”

“And save it to use it for what exactly?” April asked.

“I’m not sure,” Jeff admitted.

“Could you use it to test a drive like James is doing?”

“Probably not. It’s too small.”

“And if you own it you have to dock it or store it. Traffic control isn’t going to let you park it just anywhere nearby. It’s a traffic hazard,” April said.

Jeff just tilted his head and back to acknowledge that.

“And Dave did make significant changes to it. Changes he’ll have to undo to return it to regular service after,” April reminded him. “Don’t look at it as spending a third of what it’s worth. Look at it as saving two thirds of what a custom built would cost you.”

“That makes me feel better,” Jeff decided. “I still need to park it, but I’m going ask your grandpa if I can leave it on the mooring post outside his cubic on the north hub for a few days.”

April’s eyes got big and her mouth formed a sudden ‘O’ of surprise. It rattled Jeff because she hardly ever reacted so visibly.

“Is that a problem somehow?”

“I don’t know. You’re still running nanofabricator boxes up there, aren’t you?” April asked.

“Yes, and Happy let us move our production of bits there too.”

“Happy is going to Mars. Maybe for a couple years. He gave his apartment back to my mom and dad to merge with their cubic if they want. We talked about all kinds of things, and he gave me a lot of small stuff because he’s not taking much to Mars. But I never thought to ask what he intended to do with his zero G property.”

“Did he sell it to them or just gift them with it?” Jeff asked. “The whole thing was his originally, wasn’t it?”

“They’d never talk to me about that,” April said, furrowing her eyebrows. “But a kid hears snatches here and there. They’d mention when they got a deposit or talk about other payments. If you are sitting reading or watching a video kids are mostly invisible to adults. They wouldn’t think I could listen to both things. I think they were paying Happy the housing allowance Mitsubishi gave my dad as manager. Or at least some of it. They didn’t give him company cubic, he got a cash allowance. Now whether they were paying pure rent or getting some equity I have no idea. I was little and didn’t really think about stuff like that in any detail. I didn’t know how things worked.”

“I offered Happy rent once, a long time ago,” Jeff remembered. “He waved it away and said not to worry about it, that the cubic was an investment and with no property taxes he didn’t need rent.”

“But there’s still Mitsubishi’s maintenance fees,” April said.

Jeff nodded. And we weren’t making anything… then. I should have offered again, later.”

“What do you think it would go for in the current market?” April asked.

“Maybe a half Solar a month, and the renter carry all the fees,” Jeff guessed. “We don’t use the whole space. If we rented we could go much smaller.”

“Two years ago maybe. I think closer to a Solar a month now. Industrial space is harder to find than residential right now,” April insisted. “Chances are you’ll need more space not less.”

“But when we get the auxiliary housing fully built you know some tenants will use it for light industrial. Not that that’s a bad thing. Rents aren’t going to go down, but they may stabilize for awhile. Nobody wants anything like zoning. That just kills startups. As long as they don’t disturb their neighbors nobody will care what they do.”

“But that’s still being built out. It might help in another year,” April said, skeptical.

“We better ask what he’s going to do with it, and if we can stay there,” Jeff said. “If we can’t it’s going to be hard to find zero G cubic with access to vacuum at any price.”

*

Mo Paddington’s code appeared on her com screen. It didn’t have any urgency markers which was good. It meant Heather could take a shower and look human when she had to screen him back. She dragged him to the top of the list, and marked a few others as read, based on her administrative AI’s analysis of them. They weren’t worth wasting Dakota’s time either. Mo hadn’t made personal contact with her for a few weeks now. That said everything was going fine. She wished there was some way to teach a few of her other administrators that needlessly sending her a daily message with zero real news didn’t make them look busy and effective. It just made them look insecure and needy.

Heather had finally got to the point her time was valuable enough to need a housekeeper. Mo had been one of the people confident and honest enough to scold her for doing laundry and making her own meals at odd hours while she fell behind both work and sleep. Now when she came out of the shower the bed was made, the clothes from yesterday were gone, and there were three possible outfits for the day laid out on the made up bed. When she picked one the others would be put away.

When she left the bedroom she could smell breakfast. Her housekeeper, Amy, made her oatmeal every morning. She always sat and at least had coffee with Heather. She liked oatmeal too, about once a week, max. Heather had the steel cut sort with apples or peaches, strawberries or raisins. When that ran its course she’d have it with peanut butter, brown sugar or honey, and the occasional cream when they actually had some. When she was feeling really decadent she’d have it with chocolate. It never grew old.

The informality had upset the woman at first. She’d been in service with an Austrian family on Earth and had the idea at first she should be totally invisible and silent whenever possible. The idea of chatting with her employer was hard to accept. The fact Heather craved normal human contact with someone not standing tense and worried before their sovereign was reasonable, but it took awhile before she relaxed enough to poke fun at any of Heather’s quirks. The first sign Heather saw that she was able to break that barrier was when her kitchen screen got a permanent note in the corner that logged ‘Days Without Oatmeal,’ made to look like an officious workplace safety notice, complete with a black border. It stayed at NONE and Heather ignored her little jab.

However, Heather drew the line at having live in help. It seemed ridiculous to have somebody on call into the night, and sometimes she wanted her own privacy. Amy might leave dinner set up, but most of the time just ordered in or reminded Heather to pick something.

Besides saving Heather several hours a day, and allowing her to live in clean organized surroundings, she was a brutally honest sounding board. She’d also learned that when Amy frowned and said, “There’s something sneaky about that man,” it was worth reviewing her logs of her conversations with that person, and running them through the veracity software again for possible double meanings and emotional nuances.

Amy, like Mo, wasn’t sworn to her and she was content to leave it that way. Heather was starting to understand why the royal courts she’d read about in history had peers and advisors, jesters and even guards from foreign lands. Your relationship with subjects was always different than outsiders.

She put on a light jacket, because she kept her office and audience room cooler than her home. Supplicants wasted less of her time if made to sit on a hard bench in a cool room. She’d toyed with the idea of having an infrasound generator installed in the floor where people stood to address her. It would distress the hopelessly wordy and make them wrap it up to escape their sudden unexplained discomfort. But it seemed a dangerous experiment on further investigation. The damn stuff propagated weird ways. It might end up disturbing operations down the corridor. Instead of making petitioners wrap things up she might spoil lunch or make an accountant key in crazy numbers. But the idea still amused her.

Heather pocketed her pad, buckled on her gun belt, and put on her spex. It was a fifty meter walk to work down a private corridor. The end had a turn right before the door, for privacy and security. The exit from office to audience room, though shorter, did the same thing. Dakota was there already as usual. Heather had come in early a few times and still found her there first. She’d been moved once to ask her if she’d ever gone home or just stayed the night? Dakota had just laughed, which wasn’t an answer.

Mo answered her call right away. He, like Dakota, was already at work. He was either getting ready to do some suit work or had been out already, because he had the quilted sort of cap on that vacuum rats favored. Behind him was an unadorned wall with bare conduits.

“I haven’t heard from you in a couple weeks,” Heather said right away. “I wish I could train a few other folks to do that. You must have some news for me. Is it good or bad? Do you need a fire put out?”

“I have generally good news. One thing in particular, I’d rather share privately with you, face to face in a secure environment,” Mo requested.

“That’s unusual. It’s usually bad news that has to be delivered like that,” Heather said.

“Good news for us can be bad news for somebody else,” Mo said, smiling.

“How intriguing,” Heather allowed. “You look like you are on the way out. Can you be done and come by midday? I’ll feed you lunch if you like. Or this evening if you are in the middle of something.”

“This evening,” Mo said. “Make it supper if you can wait for me. By then I’ll have something to show you too.”

“Drop me a note when you can guess the hour closely. I’ll have Amy set up for us,” Heather promised. She disconnected on Mo, sent a text to Amy to get some take away reserved for her and for Mo based on his recorded preferences at the cafeteria, and asked Dakota if anybody was waiting in her audience room?

“You have a Madeline Kost sitting and asking to make a petition. She declined, but very politely, to share the details with me,” Dakota said, with a wry expression, “but she said it involves her son. I think you’ll perceive the nature of the problem as soon as you meet her.”

Heather didn’t comment on Dakota’s confidence in her perceptiveness. Dakota occasionally told her sovereign that “even you” could figure something out. It must be obvious.

“She’s from the original Armstrong group, isn’t she? Is this son with her?”

“She is, and no he isn’t. I looked up what we have on her. She left her husband behind in Armstrong, and that may be part of the problem. It gets complicated.”

“Then I shall return her courtesy to you by not making her wait. What does she do that is getting neglected while she is here? Anything critical?” Heather asked.

“Not immediately as in, somebody will stop breathing, critical. She’s your best bean counter. She is very, very, good at it and can look at a department report and tell you if somebody is padding their expenses or skimming something off. But she’s so smart she understands the difference between somebody taking a pencil home, or letting the fellow across the corridor bum a cup of coffee every morning, and systematic looting. A lot of watchdogs can’t grasp the idea of things being proportional.”

“OK, announce me so she doesn’t feel slighted, and you can go back to work,” Heather said. “It doesn’t sound like we need any security or a formal closure. I’ll see if I can solve her problem and send her off, happy, if it can be done.”

“If it’s all the same to you I’d like to hang around and see how this works out,” Dakota asked.

Heather granted that with a nod, and let her get ahead. Dakota was still speaking when she caught up. The woman was waiting on the hard wooden bench. She was middle aged with a slightly round Slavic face. Not fat at all but you’d never call her dainty. She didn’t pop up and rush forward like so many wanted to do, even with nobody else waiting to dispute her turn. She waited until Heather seated herself and laid her pistol and pad to each side on the table.

When Dakota retreated behind her Heather invited the woman forward with an informal wave of her hand. She seemed to know the ritual, coming forward and standing on the small carpet. Heather had to actually invite her to speak. The woman really was polite.

“First of all, I’m from the group who came from Armstrong with the second rover train under Ted Hedley. I’m not family with him, but I agreed to put myself under his leadership back then to get here. I realize he is sworn to you, but I’m not.”

“The number of people sworn to me is still small enough that each is significant and memorable to me,” Heather explained. “But that need not preclude us having a good relationship. Most people never find themselves in any conflict with me over their status.”

Madeline gave a sharp nod. “I’ve no complaint that way. I’ve found I have the same rules, eat the same, have the same access to com, generally am treated the same as sworn. But I understand the risk of either sort standing before you to request your justice. I’m not here to present a complaint and ask for justice. That would be a bit dicey for me right now. What I have is a problem, bigger than I can deal with and I’d like a solution more than any strict justice. You have the resources and I’m bringing my problem to you before it gets any bigger and becomes your problem too.”

“Preventative action is usually better,” Heather agreed. “Does this problem have anything to do with that tremendous big shiner that has your eye swollen half shut?”

“Heh… I haven’t looked in the mirror for a couple hours,” Madeline admitted. She reached up and touched it gently with her left hand and grimaced. “Looking pretty bad?”

“Bad enough I think you should drop by medical after we’re done and have it scanned. I’ve seen worse, but it would still be smart to make sure there isn’t any hidden hematomas or any fracture in the orbital bone.”

“This is the culmination of several months of increasing difficulty with my son, Karl. He’s a couple months shy of fourteen years old, big for his age and getting very hard of listening. He’s decided he is angry I brought him with me instead of leaving him at Armstrong with his father. He suddenly doesn’t like his schooling or the few kids near his age. He doesn’t like the apartment, the food, or the com restrictions I put on him. He has two other boys a little older than him he’s taken as friends, and I got this,” she indicated her black eye, “when he announced he was going to go visit them instead of meet his tutor as scheduled, and I wouldn’t let him out the door.”

“So, he forced his way past and went out anyway?” Heather asked.

“Hah, no way! He caught me with one sucker punch, but I’ve been around the barn a time or two more than him. He’s going to have a few marks on him and he’s locked in the bathroom. He’s probably angry to find out my voice overrides the house computer too. I don’t believe he ever had reason to find that out before, but I invoked the owner override when I locked him in. It’s a pretty solid door. I’m pretty confident he’s still there. He’s got the toilet and water in there, so it’s not like he’s locked in a dark closet. It’ll do him good to sit and calm down awhile.”

“Is this the first time things have gotten out of hand enough to seek help?” Heather asked.

“Here, yeah. We had some difficulties living at Armstrong. The medical people there didn’t have a child psychologist on staff, but they did a video consultation and decided to medicate Karl. At Armstrong that wasn’t open to debate. If you rejected their advice it was an automatic ticket home. My husband and I didn’t agree about that anyway. He was happy the complaints from the school stopped. They warned us if the problems continued, even with medication, we’d be sent back to Earth and that made my husband furious. I had my doubts after a few weeks because I saw his performance on his lessons drop.”

“Exactly what sort of problems?” Heather asked.

“Karl didn’t get along with the others. He didn’t want to get along. As far as I know he never did anything outside school with the handful of children near his own age. Nobody ever called us and invited him to anything like a birthday or just a plain old party. He was disciplined for striking other boys several times. He always said they hit him first, and they were simply sneakier about it than him.”

“But that wasn’t a problem when you came here?”

“No, by the time we got any kind of schooling organized here Karl had been off the drugs for quite a while. He seemed just fine without them and with the new kids even though they were a wider range of ages. The lessons were more interesting, a lot less structured, his age group only meets three mornings a week and he studies independently otherwise. At Armstrong the kids were held at school until they knew you’d be home from work. It made for a long day and no gym or free time. He liked that he was allowed to ask questions in class again, which the Armstrong school didn’t allow.”

Heather and Dakota just looked at each other. They couldn’t imagine a school where asking questions was forbidden. Madeline seemed to have missed their glance at each other.

“What is the problem then?” Heather asked. “Do you have any idea what changed?”

“The only thing I know is that when all the trouble started up at Armstrong recently our family back on Earth contacted me to let me know my husband was one of the first people sent back to Earth. Young Karl took that hard, and was upset Karl senior didn’t call from Armstrong, even though he knew com was down and we couldn’t call back and forth. What do you do or say when people just won’t accept the way things are? If he was five or six years old I could write it off to his age that he couldn’t understand it. But he’s old enough to know there’s things his dad or I can’t change.”

Dakota gave a little flick of the finger to Heather that she had a thought, and she nodded.

“Not to pry, but it seems relevant,” Dakota said. “But what is your situation with his father? Were you living together or were you estranged when you left Armstrong? Or divorced even?”

“We weren’t getting along at all. We’d probably have been arranging a divorce if we were living on Earth, it’s very hard to explain if you weren’t living there, but there wasn’t any access to the legal system at Armstrong. Try filing a complaint remotely and the Earth courts would tell you they didn’t have jurisdiction.

“There isn’t a federal court for divorces, and we were no longer residents of a state. If you wanted to go to a court you’d have to go back to Earth, and doing that would assure you’d never be allowed back. If you had any dispute the only option was to take it to an administrator, and nobody wanted to do that, because their attitude was they’d send everybody involved back to Earth as the first, second and third way to solve anything.”

She looked back at Heather, as if bringing Dakota in bothered her.

“The logistics of getting a divorce would be impossible too. There was no extra housing and very little in the way of barracks for singles and visitors. If one of us moved out of our apartment the one who stayed would have had to keep Karl junior. If I tell you the truth about Karl it will just sound like most bitter people who want a divorce. If he ended up with Karl junior he’d have neglected him. He worked long hours and he wouldn’t be home for supper. That would be a huge problem. I doubt the school would keep him over that late. The two of them had a sort of truce and hardly spoke to each other. Karl seems to have completely forgotten he didn’t get along with his dad that well.

“He’s a problem now, but I’m sure it would have been worse sooner if I’d left him there. I know it’s just a couple years, but there’s a huge difference between fourteen and eleven. Karl needed a parent and supervision much more back then. It just wouldn’t have worked to separate, and I’d probably have been back on Earth first with the boy, instead of Karl senior.”

“Why do you assume it would be you who would be sent back to Earth?” Heather asked.

“My husband worked on environmental systems. He knew their systems well and would have been much harder to replace than me.”

Heather nodded, that made sense.

“Did you renounce your North American citizenship?” Dakota asked. She had a way of bringing up questions that didn’t occur to Heather.

“No, I just left. And I don’t have a passport, or one for Karl, but he’s still a USNA citizen.”

“So, what can I do for you?” Heather asked. “I doubt I could talk sense to him if he doesn’t respect you. I find children a lot less in awe of a sitting monarch than adults. He’d just see a woman younger than his mother. I don’t do crowns and robes to awe the peasants so I can’t impress him that way. If he won’t obey you perhaps it is time to send him off to your husband. Possibly on Earth he has the means to care for him better than he could have at Armstrong. He only has four years now before he can be on his own anyway.”

“That occurred to me,” Madeline said. “I hate to send anybody to Earth. Karl was one of the first children born on the moon. We came up when we’d only been married months. If he didn’t like things at Armstrong… on Earth he’d probably end up in prison. So many young men do. I don’t know what to do. But I can’t live with him like this.”

“We don’t have much in the way of specialized psychological services and certainly not a juvenile system,” Heather said. “I’m not about to add it to someone’s job description. It’s not something you ask an unqualified person to add to their duties. So we somehow adjust him, rather quickly, or down to the Mud Ball he goes. That’s not to say you have to go. You’ve made significant effort to care for him. I’m not sure you owe him going to Earth. At best, it will only be a few more years of your care he’d get, but bluntly, you’d probably be stuck there for life.

“There’s no guarantee you would get better control of him down there, so you may not even get four years. Unless you could locate near his father, and he accepted joint custody, there would still be a separation issue. He does have a father, who could be responsible, whether he chooses to or not. If the child is dropped on him he may be forced to deal with him.”

“You could try something else,” Dakota said.

“So far we don’t have any good choices, what would you suggest?” Heather asked.

“Emancipate him. We don’t have any shortage of housing, but we do have a barracks for transients and singles who don’t want to maintain an apartment. Declare him an adult. Inform him he is on probation for a year for assaulting his mother. Give him a job cleaning public areas or scrubbing pans and such in the kitchen.

“He wants to do what he pleases. Well, let him find out what it’s like, and do whatever he wants, after hours, just like the rest of us adults. Living in barracks I can assure you the other residents will put up with a lot less crap than his mother. He’s not going to punch anybody out more than once before he finds out that crap doesn’t fly.

“If he wakes them up or doesn’t bathe a half dozen of them will unofficially express their displeasure and leave him hurting. It would be a rough but quick education. Let him know plainly that if he doesn’t show up for work or he gets in trouble with security… Dakota did a descending spiral with her index finger to show he would be heading to the Slum Ball.

Madeline sighed. “That at least gives him an opportunity, if he wants to seize it.”

“Would you allow me to give my security your door code to fetch him?” Heather asked.

“You don’t have a master override?” Madeline asked, surprised.

“If they need in anywhere that badly they can cut the door,” Heather said. “It will delay them enough to think about whether they really need to do it, or if the entry is ill considered.”

“Tell they to key this sentence in the door screen, not speak it, The r-e-i-n in Spain falls mainly in the p-l-a-n-e. Don’t forget a period. It will only work once, and unlocks everything.”

“Call Arnie,” Heather instructed Dakota, “and tell him not to take any nonsense from the kid or wrestle with him. Just Taser his butt if he doesn’t want to come along peacefully, but no more force than is needed.”

“You want a coffee while we wait?” Heather offered Madeline. “I’m going to have one. It’ll be a few minutes and I’m needing a boost already.”

Chapter 8

“Chen called! Dave’s place sent a couple guys out with James Weir and they’re waiting around the elevator port. They must be bringing his drone out. I have the feed from our camera up on the screen. Do you want to come over?” April invited.

“I know. I headed out the door before Chen was done telling me,” Jeff said. “He’s ungrappling our chase drone and checking our systems. He’ll ease it away from Home out-orbit a bit so maybe it isn’t obvious we’re watching. He’ll try a parallel track instead of an aft pursuit.”

“I had no idea Weir was vacuum qualified,” April said.

“Neither did I. But I haven’t had anybody dogging him. He might have been getting suit lessons.”

“He must have had a partner come up. He isn’t going to remote pilot that in a suit, and I can’t believe he’d just launch it with an autopilot,” April said. “They wouldn’t remote it from Earth would they?”

“Nah, he’s green to space work but he’s not stupid. The lag would kill you,” Jeff said.

“Or some innocent in the neighborhood if they mess up,” April said.

“Chen got clearance and took our drone out immediately. Hopefully before Weir started listening to the traffic feed. He gave our drone a good start along the path we think they will take. He’ll just let it coast a bit. Their drone may, almost certainly does, have more Delta V than ours. The longer they take to launch the closer we’ll be to observe.”

“What if they go off in a completely different direction?” April asked.

“Then I’ll have wasted our expense and chances are we’ll get little or no data. I’m pretty sure they are aiming at Centauri. The timing can’t be a coincidence when the moon is positioned just right to shield that as their initial launch from Earth or even LEO.

“I’m in your corridor. Looks like I’ll make it to see them launch. I’m watching the feed in my spex, but I’d rather see it on the big screen with you.”

“The entry is set to your hand,” April reminded him. “Just let yourself in.” Jeff had a habit of making her answer the door, hatch actually, since she kept an actual certified lock on the corridor. He was a bit weird about insisting on that formality. Today he didn’t argue.

“Do they know we have a camera on them?” April wondered.

“I was informed when we looked into this that there are cameras on the outside of almost every privately owned property on both hubs. Some with several and a few offer mounting leases to anybody who is willing to pay a small fee. That’s how we positioned ours. If they wanted to maintain any privacy they’d have to wrap the drone in a tarp like a big bag and take it far away from all the prying eyes.

“I’m here,” Jeff announced, and she heard the hatch cycle.

“Monitor Local Traffic Control,” April instructed the house computer. You could request clearance on internal coms, but they always gave final clearance on the radio in the clear for other traffic.

Jeff joined her on the couch, looking excited. That was unusual for him. You’d think it was his own project and drone.

“What’s this?” April asked. There was a cargo hauler coming into the view, very slowly. That was the only way they moved, by design. It had a seat on the back for a pilot, but no radar and no navigation. It was strictly run by sight and verbal communication with local traffic control. It was really no more a vessel than a pallet jack or two wheel hand truck.

“Local Home, this is the Dave’s Advanced work-sled. We’ll be anchored on the north hub until further notice.

“Thank you Dave’s. We have you marked as docked,” Traffic control responded.

The ugly flat plate stopped and rotated until it was near the elevator exit port and eased down until it touched the habitat exterior. The pilot was so smooth they saw neither touch or rebound. They couldn’t even tell when he engaged the magnets. As soon as he turned the blinking hazard lights off the articulated loading arm folded down along one edge stirred and swung out near the port.

When the port opened no vessel emerged. Instead two of the waiting men in suits eased inside the open port up to their waists. They bent over after anchoring themselves and gave a long pull on an open framework. It emerged slowly. It looked like as close to nothing as you could imagine. a lacework of mostly open space with a few small boxes and spheres. They didn’t hurry. As lacy as it looked it still had enough mass to be a hazard if you get a hand between it and something solid. No experienced vacuum workers jerked things around and got them moving faster than they could control.

“That’s Dave’s guys pulling it out,” April surmised. “No way Dave would trust a newbie to move anything with any mass for which his shop was responsible. So that’s James standing there watching his delivery, and keeping his hands off of it.”

The torpedo shape emerging was about four meters long but much less than a meter in diameter. The boxes and spheres inside its frame were so compact you could basically look right through it. There were flat rings of black material framing an empty space. Not full rings; They went straight briefly on four sides where they touched and formed an empty cube with open faces and slightly open corners.

The two men guiding it out slowed it to a stop and gave a sign to the operator on the work-sled. He reached out with the sled crane and positioned the gripper on the end of the crane about the middle of the frame. But he didn’t activate the clamp until the supervisor by the port gave him a thumbs up that it was positioned right.

Then he didn’t move it to his sled deck, or carry it away gripped on the boom. Instead he swung it slowly up and away from the port, then turned it ninety degrees and eased it down until it was held waist high from the station surface on the opposite side of the sled. The fellows who had extracted it retreated back to the one watching, and then escorted him around the sled to the drone. It was positioned conveniently to work on while standing beside it. Whatever they were doing, adjusting or testing, they took quite awhile to do it, and moved around a lot. The work-sled operator sat patiently waiting for them.

“They must have really compact instrumentation. I assume that’s what the black boxes in the nose are. I don’t see much volume there for reaction mass. That has to be what the larger spheres are. I’d love to be down there elbow deep in it. We can find out more later by blowing up the image. If I zoom in too tight right now I’ll miss something,” Jeff said.

“What are those cages with nothing in them?” April asked.

“The geometry of it looks like super conducting coils for a polywell reactor, but why the little disk floating in the center of each coil, and the pyramid at each corner?” Jeff asked. “And why three?”

“I swear you have better eyes than me,” April complained. “I didn’t see those smaller pieces. It’s all black, I’m having a tough time seeing them even after you pointed them out.”

“Are they polywell reactors but they just haven’t finished them?” Jeff asked. “If they intend to finish them out here and close them up why didn’t they bring the materials on the sled?”

The trio of suited workers stepped back almost to the sled. One had a control box of some sort held against his chest and fiddled with it. The rear framework of coils developed a glow in the center void. It grew, but not a plain fuzzy ball, it grew in a complex fractal pattern almost like a pink chrysanthemum of glowing tendrils. It progressed until it was too bright to see any detail of structure unless you looked at the edge.

“But… if you have all this vacuum, why waste mass enclosing a polywell?” Jeff asked.

“Damn, that was pretty!” April said.

The trapped ball of plasma eased off in brightness, and the other two reactors went through the same testing sequence. When all were running a faint purple glow grew in a fan from the frame of the drone just ahead of each reactor.

“Why is there a discharge off the frame?” April asked.

“I think they’re just testing it,” Jeff said. “It’s grounded to Home through the crane. When it’s in free flight it will build up a potential steadily. I’m surprised there’s enough leakage and neutral gas escaping from the polywells to make it visible. I doubt you’ll see that in flight.”

“OK, but that still doesn’t tell me why.”

“Oh, it’s necessary to set up the conditions for a quantum transition. It increases the probability by a huge factor. It’s not just the effectively point charge on the object, but the shape of the expelled charge in the space behind the object. It’s dynamic, and in the math we had on screen if you look.”

“It is, if you know what you’re looking at,” April reminded him.

“But that might not be necessary with sufficient ability to alter the other variable, as you grasped quickly when we were speaking with him. So I know you understood it at some level.”

“Don’t count on my understanding it in any depth,” April begged.

“Sweet, pretty and modest too,” Jeff said, and patted her knee. April just rolled her eyes.

“M3 local,” the feed from traffic control said. “This is Dave’s Advanced Spacecraft Services requesting a departure clearance to release a supervised drone from dock to clear your control area. Tail number A000014 transponder code 13012 99437 remote pilot Harold Givens.”

“Thank you Dave’s. We have no close traffic for the next half hour. Depart at your convenience and contact your destination control before entering any restricted space.

“Roger M3 local. We are exiting to translunar space and don’t have a controlled destination.”

That was unusual enough to make the controller pause before replying. “Understood Dave’s, be safe out there,” he intoned, even though it wasn’t manned.

A sliver of Earth was slightly visible across the lunar horizon right now. The drone headed off at a modest acceleration that would put that line of sight behind it. April said nothing. Jeff still seemed patiently confident it would turn and take the path their own drone was well along. They weren’t trying to hide from Earth yet, but then their vessel’s emissions would be harder to observe at this range while it wasn’t pointed away from Earth. When Weir’s drone changed course on an angle that would keep it behind the moon Jeff was unsurprised.

Jeff inquired of the navigational program on his hand pad how long the vessel would be able to stay behind the lunar shield. “They’ll be hidden almost an hour,” Jeff informed April. “By that time, if somebody on Earth or in LEO does see their exhaust, it will be hard to tell what they are or where they are from.”

Chen increased the acceleration of their platform again, and eased it into a slightly convergent course. Weir’s drone had a significant advantage in acceleration. April took the chance she’d miss something, and just see the recording, and went to make coffee. She had plenty of time. The Brazilian’s drone was well ahead of theirs when she returned.

“I need a decision,” Chen asked. “I’m about ten minutes from needing to break off acceleration if we want to retain enough reaction mass to return the drone. I can’t keep up with it, but I can coast. It’s just that the distance will open up steadily after I cease acceleration. How close do you absolutely need to be? It would really help if you would explain to me what you expect their vessel to do. Since they’re doing it right out there in front of God and everybody else can’t you share it with me?”

“There’s no way to know,” Jeff admitted. “It’s an entirely new thing. This is strictly proprietary, Chen. I haven’t told anybody but April and Heather, and I don’t intend to discuss it publicly. If it works the owners may make a big announcement. I have no idea if they will or not, that’s up to them. I’m not sure anybody else is watching, and Dave will be sworn to secrecy. But I expect the drone to just disappear.”

“Disappear?”

“Yes, and I have no idea if it will just be gone or do interesting things.”

“OK. I thought I might advise you, but I’ve got nothing… “

“I don’t have an agreement with Dave to waste the drone. Go ahead and cut the drive and if it’s close enough we’ll get something,” Jeff decided. “If not, we tried.”

“I’m cutting in three minutes. That will allow us to recover the drone at minimum acceleration. I left a small margin too. How long should I let it coast after their drone?” Chen asked.

“As long as it keeps accelerating. If it goes an hour I’ll be surprised.”

They watched as the distance opened up. It was both boring and nerve-racking.

Seventeen minutes later their drone reported a flash. It was broad spectrum and bright enough for someone on Home to see if anyone was tracking it with a telescope.

“Don’t turn it back just yet,” Jeff said quickly. “There may be physical particles trailing the light in a few seconds.”

Eleven seconds later they had a faint pulse of high energy electrons and then a few heavier particles. Their instrumentation wasn’t up to telling them exactly what the heavier ones were.

“It worked,” Jeff said, in the strangest voice. “It really did work.”

“But, where did it go?” Chen asked. Even if he could guess, he wanted confirmation. Maybe he was afraid of looking stupid.

April looked at Jeff, but he had that distant stare, and she didn’t think he was going to answer.

“Chances are, it’s gone to Centauri,” she told Chen.

“It’s on its way to the star?” Chen demanded.

“No. It’s there,” Jeff said, finding his voice again. “Now there’s a lot of other questions. What kind of shape was it in when it arrived? Did it retain its relative motion? So many questions… “

“Are you telling me they may be able to send stuff to another star?” Chen asked. “That’s like the biggest deal ever. Why wouldn’t they announce it to everybody? Why would you want to us to keep it secret too?”

“Because we don’t know if you can do it in one piece and live to come back,” April explained.

“It’s almost worth taking the chance,” Chen said, awed.

“See what I mean?” Jeff asked April. “As smart as he is, Chen would contemplate taking the risk, given how great the reward is.”

“Go right ahead,” April invited. “I’m not buying a ticket until somebody comes back with vacation pix and convinces me they have a lovely spa and restaurant at the Centauri Resort.”

It didn’t even bother her when they both laughed at that.

*

Young Karl looked sullen. That was about what Heather expected. He walked in ahead of her security officer. That apparently didn’t require use of either the Taser or restraints. That was to the good since neither or both wouldn’t have surprised her. He was a big kid.

When he looked at his mother there was a brief flash of hostility, quickly hidden. He looked all around, cautious, appraising Heather and then Dakota even longer.

“We haven’t met face to face before. Are you familiar with who, or what, I am?” Heather asked.

Karl nodded. “You’re the Queen.”

“Close enough,” Heather agreed. She didn’t want waste words or get off topic in order to shave fine nuances of meaning with this kid.

“We’re trying to decide what to do with you.”

Karl radiated hostility, but said nothing. Heather considered. He wasn’t smart enough or mature enough to control his expression. Nor devious enough she mentally added to the list.

“Your mother considers herself unable to deal with you now. I don’t know if that’s a surprise to you or not. She didn’t say so, but most sane people don’t want to live with somebody who will physically assault them. I realize that historically a lot of women have put up with men physically battering them, but it’s a sick relic of our culture best left behind.”

“She grabbed me first!” Karl objected.

Madeline looked astonished that he would say that. Heather just regarded him and said nothing, She put her chin in her cupped hand and thought about it until Dakota looked at her surprised by the delay.

“Why didn’t you resist my deputy Arnold when he fetched you?” Heather finally asked, with a quizzical expression, like it was all beyond her. “If you had I’m sure he’d have felt compelled to inform us. Did he resist?” Heather directed to the officer.

“He came along as meek as can be.”

“Interesting,” Heather said, staring at the boy. Karl looked uncomfortable for the first time.

“We had thoughts to rehabilitate you,” Heather revealed. “I’m not sure it can be done. If you strike out at those you see as weaker, but not anyone big and strong enough to be a danger… well all that tells me is that you are cowardly. Your mother said you were bullied at school in Armstrong. Sometimes people who were mistreated turn around and start paying it back when they can. Now that you’re a bit bigger… ” Heather waved a hand at his size. “Is that what you intend to do? I can’t subject my people to that.”

“I didn’t know she believed me,” Karl said, clearly surprised.

“What an odd thing to say. Could you explain that better?” Heather asked.

“The kids at school were sneaky,” Karl said. “They’d time it to hit you so the teacher wasn’t looking. Or the kid sitting behind you would smack you on the back of the head or jab you with his pencil where it couldn’t be seen. If you hit back all the teacher saw was you hitting, never why. But when I explained they never believed or maybe didn’t care. They’d never look at the video if we were where there was surveillance. When they called my mom in she just always told me to do what they said and not make trouble. She never ever said a word to make me think she believed me. I figured she thought the same as the teachers.”

“It doesn’t matter what I believed,” Madeline said, angrily. “If we got home and I said you were right at all it would just have encouraged you to do it again. There’s a time to knuckle under and get through it, right or wrong. It doesn’t matter if you were picked on or what I believed.”

“It mattered to me,” Karl said, hurt.

“Apparently there’s some issues between you that were never aired or admitted,” Heather said. “And we’re entirely missing input from Karl senior. But I’m not a trained family counselor. I have neither the time nor resources to heal what has happened before. Bluntly, I have to do what’s best for my people and community above what is best, or fair, for either of you.

“Your mother contributes to Central, since I’m told she’s quite good at her job. You, so far have been like all children, an investment in time and resources one hopes will pay off long term. That’s looking pretty iffy, young man. You’ve been fed and housed, clothed and schooled. You aren’t owned, but in consideration of those things most societies expect you to treat your parents with an extra measure of respect. There are some societies where you’d be put to death for raising your hand against a parent.”

Heather paused and let him think about that a bit. She consciously refrained from looking at her pistol laying naked on the table.

“I won’t banish your mother from my kingdom, which would effectively send her back to Earth. If I send you back to Armstrong you can assume they will send you to your father. I have no idea what his circumstances are back in North America. That would be the easiest course for me. If you want, you can request that. We’ll have you escorted on a bus back to Armstrong.

“The alternative, the only one I’m offering, is for you to be emancipated,” Heather said.

“What does that mean?” Karl asked.

“You will be declared an adult. You get to do what you want, but you are totally responsible for your own actions. You have to work and follow the rules like everybody else. I’d add the burden of being on probation for a year because you assaulted your mother. Hit… get physical with anybody, fail to show up for work without cause, generally mess up in any way and you’re gone. No trial or anything needed. You just get loaded on the bus to Armstrong.”

Karl was looking at her with his mouth hanging open.

“Pick one,” Heather demanded.

“I can get hired by someone and work?” he asked.

“You can get hired by anybody you can talk into it,” Heather agreed. “But the reality is you have little to offer to an employer, so I will find something for you. Expect it to be scut work with low pay and long hours, but nobody goes hungry or lacks a place to sleep in Central.”

“Can I still study?” Karl asked.

“Oddly I thought you were objecting to that,” Heather said. “You can do anything you please, after hours if you aren’t too tired. Tutoring costs money, you’ll either have to pay for it or find somebody to offer you charity. I wouldn’t encourage your mother to continue to subsidize you, but I won’t forbid it. You might get your father to help you if he has the means.”

“I have no idea what his com code is or how to find out,” Karl said.

Heather looked funny at Madeline. She couldn’t make herself meet Heather’s gaze. There were definitely more complexities that weren’t being shared with her.

“I believe I can find that out for you,” Heather promised.

“Then I’ll try it,” Karl said. “Everybody tells me Earth is awful.”

“Very well. Deputy Arnold will take you to the singles and transients’ barracks and introduce you to the administrator and get you a bunk. He’ll also pick up your things and bring them to you. I’ll see to it somebody finds you employment and comes for you tomorrow morning,” Heather promised.

She didn’t expect any thanks, and Karl didn’t surprise her with one.

Chapter 9

“What did you learn?” April asked, at supper the next day.

“Not much. The flash of light was very white, with no spectral lines. There were definitely emissions outside the visible range. There was a faint pulse of x-rays. We also saw infrared, and I’d bet anything there was ultraviolet radiation. We just didn’t have sensors for it. The radios registered a blip in the frequencies being used for data too. I suspect it doesn’t cut off until very low frequencies. There’s a disturbance there, but whatever mechanism is at, work it would be difficult to get anything to efficiently emit at a wavelength longer than the size of the disturbance. Just like a short antenna won’t emit really long waves easily.”

“And the physical particles?” April asked Jeff. “You said there were some.”

“Electrons and probably protons. Not all that many. And no heavier nuclei or they would have lagged more. We didn’t have anything to detect neutrons. The thing is, they may be decay products of other things. You’d probably have to be quite close to sample them directly, and I suspect there are tidal forces in that close that would be a hazard to machinery, or people for that matter.”

“Why tidal forces?” April wondered.

“Mass distorts space. All of a sudden a bunch of it isn’t there. I haven’t done the math, just making assumptions on general principles,” Jeff admitted.

“So are we going to build one?” April asked.

“Not… quickly,” Jeff said, looking thoughtful.

“Don’t make me drag it out of you in little pieces,” April demanded.

“I have to think on it awhile, by myself. I absolutely don’t want to talk to Weir and give him the opportunity to gain an insight, and do the same as I did, walk away with it unshared.”

April refrained from saying she’d kept him from sharing it. Maybe he didn’t even remember clearly. When he was in that strange altered state who knew what registered when he was jolted out of it?

“I see little benefit now to continue shooting off probes that can’t return. Even one that is engineered slightly differently than Weir’s. The way I see it, he’s proved out the basic math. And building a robotic one that can return is difficult for all the reasons we discussed before. But if we build one it’s going to be based on gravity as the co-force not a point charge. That means we need more material from my mum, and you know how dear that is. If I send it off I want it back.”

“A manned ship could refuel from ice or skim a gas giant’s atmosphere,” April speculated. “We know there are gas giants and big rocky planets. There’s probably comets and maybe asteroids too.

“If they don’t emerge as a shower of particles instead of whole, and kill everybody,” Jeff reminded her. “I couldn’t even ask for volunteers willing to chance it.”

“Yeah, that would make this all pointless,” April admitted.

“I know it isn’t in your nature, but try to be patient,” Jeff pleaded. “I’ve always intended to build a starship someday, even if it had to be a sub-light one. If we wait, Weir and his partners may do some of the work for us. When we do build one it’s going to be expensive. So the best thing we can really do right now is keep doing business and making money.”

“It would sure help if Earth wasn’t such a mess,” April complained. “We could sell them more stuff, although their prices might be higher if the economy was hot.”

“Be glad things aren’t worse,” Jeff told her. “They haven’t had a real war this century, and the killer flu didn’t come back as an annual variety. If we ever actually lost Earth I don’t know if we’d make it. We might go extinct. There aren’t that many of us off Earth yet, and we have quite a few food plants, but we lack the wide variety of things we’d need to Terraform a new planet.

“Do you know? Heather told me the other day she doesn’t even have crabgrass in her plant library. We need all the weeds and a variety of small mammals and insects at least. I’d like things like skunks, and squirrels, and dessert mice. And if you have them you need coyotes and hawks. I know that much, and ecological systems aren’t even a serious hobby to me.

“We need a real expert who could build an ecology up in steps so it wouldn’t crash. But who, able to do that, would hire on to run tunnel farms?” Jeff asked. “That’s all we can offer right now outside theoretical work. Somebody who can do things like that will only be swayed so much by money. The work needs to be interesting too. Compared to the cost of amassing a biological library a starship will be cheap.”

“And here I was afraid you weren’t looking far enough ahead,” April said.

*

“Mo Paddington will have dinner with me,” Heather told Amy. “he said 1900, but allow a little leeway on that. Don’t get something ready to serve at 1900 that will be ruined if he doesn’t show until 1930. He has a crew and can get sudden problems handed him when he’s trying to walk out the door.”

“How should I set up?” Any asked.

Heather looked at her oddly. “Like you would if I was eating alone. It’s not like we have a formal dining room and you have three sets of china to choose among.”

Amy looked irritated with her. “Should I set you opposite each other, or at adjacent sides? Do you want wine glasses out or a hot beverage? Should I spend extra on something fancy for dessert? Do you want a centerpiece on the table? And we don’t have fancy china but I at least have a choice between the usual paper napkins and nicer cloth. You can set the lighting and music as you wish.”

“This is a business meeting with one of my managers,” Heather told her. “Did you somehow get the idea it was to be a romantic evening?”

“I had hopes,” Amy admitted. “You don’t seem to do much for fun.”

“I’m… satisfied,” Heather said without much conviction. “Besides, Mo is married, too old for me, and there isn’t even the start of any spark there between us. I know Mo is friendly and relaxed around me but that’s the extent of it.

“I have a relationship with Jeff and April, as hard as it is to find time to get together with them. I really don’t need the complication of others who would have to be less important to me than them. That’s cruel to be involved with somebody who has to be second tier. They always figure it out and get hurt. Anyway, I’m busy, and what I’m doing is important.”

“Life is important,” Amy said tight lipped, but turned away to do other things.

Heather had to force herself not to continue the exchange and let her walk away. Heather already well knew that Amy was stubborn and opinionated on many issues. Arguing with her was unlikely to reach a mutually agreeable end. She wasn’t sworn to Heather but in the end she was still domestic staff, and even if Heather wasn’t full of herself, it seemed like there should be some divide there. She didn’t think it befit a sovereign to bicker with the help.

Still… she considered. Had she become an ascetic? Not in her pleasures like eating or dress. But socially? She kept Amy as much for companionship as utility. It was nice to have her at the breakfast table. If she had a cat or a ferret maybe she’d be happy with a maid coming in to clean and do the laundry while she was busy mid-day instead of Amy’s full time help. But they had no pets yet.

Everyone was so busy there wasn’t any idle ruling class to do empty social things. She’d read some historical novels about wealthy society people. You had to wonder if it was honest history or totally fiction. Could people really spend most of their day driving around in a carriage to be seen, or calling on others or receiving them to visit? One novel set in Paris before the World War seemed downright creepy. How could all that not be mind numbingly boring after a few days? What a colossal waste of time to be driven to a friend’s house without being able to call ahead and at least know they’d be home.

Her day was filled with administrative detail. There simply weren’t enough hands to do the work at Central. If she delegated large scale planning to anyone their current duties would suffer. Dakota came closest to being her aide, but Dakota herself made clear that she didn’t want the burden of authority. She would implement what Heather decreed, but wanted direction.

Should she start searching for a serious second in command? Someone who could be an heir to her sovereignty? It seemed like a difficult position to fill. What could she say to make it attractive? It was a position with no advancement possible unless your boss died. Then retaining it depended heavily on having the force of will to project your own authority. Others might well challenge your succession. Loyalty from those supporting the previous sovereign was in no way guaranteed. Indeed you might be a target while simply waiting to assume the mantle of power.

Then there was also the danger that anyone suitable to the job might grow impatient and depose you. A lesson that Heather had taken to heart from history. The few she trusted fully had no desire to be the sovereign of Central. Jeff and April in particular were not only busy with their own projects at Home, but those endeavors were all necessary and supporting of Central. She didn’t have to see them every day to feel her bond to them was still there and strong, but it would be nice not to go weeks at a time without seeing them.

Could that be arranged? The burden seemed to be on them to come see her, so far. If they could be away for a few days and not have their businesses and projects collapse why couldn’t she? She knew Jeff was smarter than her, in abstract things. April however was much more skilled in social things, and this seemed to be more that sort of a problem. She just had to think on how to ask April what to do without seeming needy or damaging her own dignity.

That got tacked to the top of her TO DO list. The first four or five items on that list always seemed overwhelming in scope. For now, she had to decide which of the trials of fungal products should go ahead first, and how finished tunnels should be for width, paving and com wiring before they allowed autonomous delivery vehicles to use them. She hoped to have those two in the DONE file before she had dinner with Mo.

*

Amy set appetizers out for them and informed Heather the entrees were in the oven, dessert in the cooler, and she was headed out for the day. That was their custom when Heather had guests she didn’t need to serve. There were no inappropriate coy looks or double entendres despite her earlier opinions.

Mo was thoroughly relaxed with her. That had been a slow process to achieve. When he’d first come to the moon he’d been very restrained and hesitant to advance odd ideas. He’d added a lot of careful qualifying statements and disclaimers. Now, he spoke freely and wasn’t shy to add absurd suggestions to his list of solutions as humor. Perhaps Amy mistook that for something more.

Mo added fake cream to his coffee, an experimental product at the prototype stage. He closed his eyes when he sipped and tried to remember the taste of real cream exactly. He hadn’t had any for about five years back before they left Earth. The memory was elusive. The closest he’d had recently was the little half and half packets the cafeteria on Home got occasionally, which weren’t really the same at all as real cream. When he opened his eyes Heather was looking at him oddly.

“No insult to your coffee,” he hastened to add. “I’m not sure we have the flavor exactly right yet. I need to have a carton of ultrapasteurized sent up and do blind taste tests. On Earth we drank coffee with breakfast, but served it after supper, if at all, given how dear it had gotten. I’ve gotten used to having it all through supper too.”

“I’m not a coffee snob to give you a hard time. Put sugar in it for all I care. You can arrange a test if you want, but I suspect it’s good enough. I don’t use cream, but my guests who have used the sample didn’t comment on it. They did however use it in a second cup, which I took for a pretty good endorsement,” Heather said.

“You’re right. If people use it with no comment it’s passed the memory test,” Mo agreed.

“Except a lot of us haven’t had the real thing. I’m not sure I ever have,” Heather admitted.

“I suppose if you were accustomed to the substitute then the real thing might taste off. When we have people around other stars they won’t have any idea what the original Earth products tasted like,” Heather said. “I’ve had people mention that some things like cheese or sourdough bread you can’t just start making thousands of miles away. The cultures drift and change.”

Mo smiled big and chuckled. “I don’t think we have to worry about that for awhile.”

Heather tried a light-hearted smile at that, with no success. Her eyes told the lie.

His smile vanished. “My dear sweet girl, don’t ever try to make your living playing poker.”

That did make her smile. And if he wanted to call her a girl that was fine too. It eased her mind that Amy hadn’t seen something she’d missed.

“Do you want to tell me something about it?” Mo asked when she said nothing.

“I’m not sure I should,” Heather admitted. “It’s embarrassing.”

“How can it possibly be embarrassing? Is it Jeff again? Has he really got a star-drive? I know the man is smart, but I didn’t think he was that deep of a theory guy,” Mo said.

“Just a moment, I’m going to get our plates,” She took advantage of the delay to think on it.

When she returned with the entree Heather asked, “May I have your word to keep it confidential, for now, if I tell you the bare outline?”

“Upon my honor,” Mo promised.

“That sounds so old fashioned,” Heather said. She was just delaying, still uncomfortable.

Mo just tilted his head to acknowledge the truth of that.

“You know we have some intelligence gathering capabilities?” Heather asked.

“I’ve been made aware of that more than once. How could you run a sovereign state without it?”

“Yeah, well Jeff rented a inter-orbital drone for us, and had an instrument pack put on it. There was a fellow up from Brazil who came to Home to do some tests. They had a custom drone built. Big bucks involved there,” she added. “Jeff guessed where they’d go. When they launched our drone had a bit of a lead but was passed. The Brazilian’s drone was very light and powered by three fusion reactors we now suspect were improved also. It took off for the Centauri system on a course that shielded it from easy Earth observation.”

Mo started to say something and thought better of it.

“A bit past a million kilometers out, it disappeared in a flash of light,” Heather said.

“Exploded?”

Heather shook her head no. “Disappeared. Jeff said there’s a mathematical basis to believe it made a quantum transition to the Centauri system.”

Mo was an engineer. He thought on it a few seconds, and shook his head.

“Disappeared here does not mean it appeared there. I very much doubt they have any way to verify that. Four point something light years means we couldn’t know until a signal came back, and it would take a very powerful directional signal to confirm it. I doubt you could even detect a nuclear explosion at that range. I don’t have any idea offhand how I’d go about verifying it. The mass of any powerful enough radio you’d need to send would be prohibitive.”

“That’s why we don’t want to talk it up,” Heather agreed. “First we were snooping. The fewer people know we do that, especially the specifics of how, the better. We had no indication they knew we observed. The fellow, Weir, already accused Jeff of spying on him when he wasn’t, so I have no doubt he would speak up again if he suspected.

“Second we have no idea if it got there or in what shape it got there. Jeff speculated it might just appear disassembled – as a shower of particles. We won’t know until somebody makes one that can go… and jump back to us.

“It would be a shame to call attention to their work and be the cause of Brazil or North America interfering with their research, or building a better wall of secrecy around it. We’re certainly in no position to finance such a huge project ourselves right now. So we hope to benefit from their continued work, if we can.”

Mo looked unhappy, and Heather wondered if he regretted his vow.

“Well, I thought I had big exciting news, but even the possibility that someone has a way to build a star-drive completely eclipses it,” Mo said.

“Oh, then I guess we’ll skip dessert too,” Heather said.

Mo looked at her like she was insane, and then exploded with laughter.

“You do have a way of putting things in perspective. Life goes on, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Heather agreed, “even such mundane things as cherry cheesecake.”

“Cherries?… importado! You spoil me.”

“We’ll get around to growing them eventually,” Heather promised. “More coffee?”

*

When the cheesecake was finished Heather made a show of pushing her dish away.

“It’s getting late. You better tell me your news, or I’m going to kick you out without hearing it, so I can go to bed,” Heather threatened.

Mo reached in a pocket and retrieved little plastic baggy, the sort you pinched on the corner to unseal. It appeared to have some gravel in it, but once he poured them in his hand she caught the metallic sheen.

“I’ve been processing regolith with the machine the French traded us for the tunnel borers.”

“How much moon dust does that represent?” Heather asked.

“About a ton and a half, but it was particularly rich dirt we gathered from a somewhat shaded crater. We’re finding the finer dust back in the cracks of the crater walls and filling crevasses is worth collecting first. The thing is, their machine is easy to reproduce. It wouldn’t be especially easy to upscale, but there is no reason we can’t build a thousand of them in the next few years.”

“And it’s worth doing?” Heather asked.

“I doubt you had any idea how worthy, when you made the trade. How desperate were they?”

“Pretty desperate. I’d say their survival depended on it,” she admitted. “They could always count on supplies because their support was a matter of national pride for France. Suddenly if they want any real independence they have to pay their own way. I’m not saying they won’t still do business with France, the parting being amiable is more appearances than literal. They still are buying things like parts for all their machinery from France. But if they run a deficit it isn’t going to be hidden as a minor line item in a huge Earth nation budget. They’ll borrow and pay for it now like anyone else.

“When they wanted spare parts and improvements for the boring machines they hadn’t thought to include in the original deal, I also made them reveal how to make the armor we bought from them before too. That spoke to inexperience that they neglected maintenance items.”

“That’s nice,” Mo said, “but this was the bigger trade. They either brought out the best stuff first to get what they needed, or maybe they didn’t have much in the way of lesser stuff to offer. The thing about this process is it separates each element to five nines purity in one pass. You can improve efficiency several ways. You first separate certain bulk minerals electrostatically, and take the iron out magnetically. There are some things like clusters of glass particles that you can just sieve out. This reduces the bulk by well over half. Those can then be set aside as tailings. Each sort of ‘waste’ will still have valuable elements worth recovering if there is need of them.

“If history is any indication, after enough years, and all the pay-dirt is processed, tailings then become the next generation’s ore. They’re actually to the stage of mining landfills of old trash on Earth. But for now, we take the milled and reduced dust and run it through the French machine. The dust is crushed again until it can’t be handled any finer because the particles cling to each other. The dust is vaporized and the vapor comes in contact with a large rotating drum coated with carbon nanotubes on end. The majority of the vapor condenses back to dust and is recycled.”

“So it strips a monatomic layer off this drum each turn?” Heather asked. “That has to take forever.”

“This is just the prototype, and it has a three square meter surface turning at a hundred thousand rpm. So it strips three hundred thousand square meters a second. Near twenty square kilometers a minute.

“The vapor is grabbed on the end of the nanotubes as individual atoms. A few tubes get no passengers, and a smaller number grab double molecules like hydrogen that combined back together before touching a nanotube. You lose some of the volatiles like that if you don’t catch them in a cold trap. That’s just one of the improvements we’ll make over the original French version.”

“The key to the whole thing is being able to control the release of each element from the end of the nanotubes. It’s the timing that allows each one to be released on an exact trajectory to its own collection plate. Most of the solids look like soot as they build up. Things like sulfur and gasses the French were willing to waste. We want to harvest everything and waste nothing, so we’re experimenting with various types of traps.”

“Why would the French throw away the gasses?” Heather wondered. “They have need of atmosphere too. They import nitrogen in bulk and other gasses in smaller quantities.”

“I suspect they have no effective way to store it in bulk,” Mo guessed, “but one of my fellows suggested a very effective method. We haven’t done this yet, but we’re working on it. We’ll put the gases in beads made of lunar glass. We can fill them to around three pascals and they are still available as a resource later if we crack them open.

“What the young man came up with that really impressed me is a way to save the helium3 in these beads. We coat the inside with a polymer and convert it to graphene from outside with a laser. He’s done that with sheet glass so we know it works.”

“What are the… shot?” Heather asked, nodding at the pieces in his hand.

“Just a few samples. Most of it is still dust so fine we couldn’t handle it in the air here, or it might spontaneously combust,” Mo warned. “These are just a few samples we fused to give you an idea what one machine will produce. Some very useful bulk things like titanium we separated out in the tailings pile, but it’s still recoverable. In a year I can have maybe three hundred separators running. Possibly more if you’ll agree to channel the resources back into building them for a fast start.

“Chromium, about a twenty gram nugget,” he said laying it on a napkin between them. “Cobalt near six grams, although I don’t expect it to be that high everywhere. Copper, well a few milligrams, but it’ll add up with enough machines running.” He dropped a piece on the napkin the size of a grain of rice.

“Platinum, we got almost two grams, but we also got all the other platinum group metals in smaller quantities. Gold a bit under three grams,” he said, dropping a peanut sized oval on the paper. “Thorium was a surprising four plus grams, and uranium we got almost a gram,” he said finishing out the pieces.

“So, if we have a thousand of these working in three years, we’ll be harvesting how many multiples of these?” Heather demanded.

“This took a month to run. I saw your eyes light up on the gold. We could be producing thirty kilograms annually in three years. Roughly a thousand ounces. Call it twelve hundred Solars.”

“That’s a fortune,” Heather said stunned.

“You like gold because it’s fungible, but the others are just as surely wealth. And more of it really. No reason to arbitrarily stop building separating machines at a thousand. What you really have to decide is how many dedicated fabricators to build them you want. Ten? A hundred? We’re not going to run out of regolith for centuries. The first few machines are human labor intensive. Past ten or twelve we should really build a fabricator for the fabricators.

“We could do that at first, but it will delay everything a month, but then we’d reach the break-even point for investing in that sort of startup within two months I think. We can build the new machines from harvested materials mostly. Some things like wire we still don’t draw our own. Insulating the wire will actually be harder. But the bulk of them, ninety percent, can be local materials. The other ten percent won’t be cheap,” Mo warned.

“We are not like the French, desperate for a deal to survive. Build in two stages as you outlined, and don’t plan on capping the number of machines built until we discuss it further.” Heather instructed him. She bit her lip and shook her head amazement. “Do you realize this may be half of Central’s gross national product in just a few years?” The man didn’t seem as excited as she’d have expected.

“I hope so,” Mo agreed. “I wouldn’t bring something to you directly if it wasn’t important news. But we have to get ahead of the French before they get sorted out and pay more attention to business than politics. We need to start production first, and do improvements so we have control of the markets and stay ahead of them in this game.”

“Yes, you need to talk to me right away if anything impedes this project,” Heather insisted. “As you said, the products are all wealth, and we can use a lot of it ourselves, but I have to talk to Jeff and get him to recruit some expertise about selling them. I have no idea how much of these commodities can be absorbed by the Earth market. They’re in an economic slump and some things like platinum group metals we could drive prices down, to our detriment. We may need to stockpile some things. It’s going to be complicated.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t ask me to do that,” Mo said.“It’s bad enough Jeff thinks I’m an architect, without you pegging me for a commodities trader.”

“Oh Mo, you aren’t a process engineer either, but you’re doing fine with this aren’t you? We all have to wear a lot of hats here.”

Chapter 10

“I have an answer about James Weir’s partners,” Chen said. “It was mostly a matter of searching public records, but they were old records and it took some significant man hours to obtain. The one man is a native Brazilian, from a relatively poor family, but brilliant and did well in business. He has traveled extensively, but doesn’t have strong ties to anywhere else. He’s the older of the two, and if he didn’t bankroll it he has the connections to do so.

“The other fellow is born in Brazil of French parents. They have some family money too, but brought it with them. They hoped for more opportunity in Brazil and it looks like they found it. The grandparents are comfortable, and still living in France. I suspect they may have basic life extension therapy because they are uncommonly well for their age. He has visited, but the tie seems more familial than political. Neither are very active in Brazilian politics.

“The thing with the bug, we just happened to have one chance connection to exploit or it would be a mystery. It belongs to the Bolivians.”

“Who?” Jeff asked, unbelieving. “The Japanese didn’t have a clue. Do the Bolivians really have that advanced a domestic tech industry? Why wouldn’t they buy Japanese or Korean?”

“The Bolivians,” Chen insisted. “You said it was crude. So that makes it all the more believable. I have firm information from one of our agents in Argentina that they’ve seen that sort of a robotic bug, and the agency they were penetrating would only have been of interest to the Bolivians.”

“So they are only inferring that indirectly,” Jeff said.

“It’s a more than you got from the Japanese,” Chen pointed out.

“Why? Jeff asked. “What would the Bolivians do with it?”

“I didn’t ask. I’m no more conversant with the state of politics between South American countries than you are. I’m hoping you don’t want a broad scale analysis, because I just lucked out to get that datum for you. I beg you, it would be a massive waste of resources to pursue this.”

“I agree,” Jeff said. That made relief visibly spread on Chen’s face. “The only thing I can think to do with this information is give it to James Weir. It’s of interest to him. I don’t see any way it can actually harm us, and it may ingratiate him to us in some small measure.”

“Wonderful,” Chen said. “Let me know if it leads anywhere.”

*

“Ah, you’re still on Home,” Jeff said with satisfaction when he tried James Weir’s com code.

“How do you know I didn’t just have my calls forwarded?” James asked suspiciously.

“No lag,” Jeff said. “I have a hard time catching lunar lag, but LEO or the Earth is obvious.”

“I’m not used to thinking about that,” Weir admitted. “What do you need?” he asked, not especially friendly. At least he didn’t drop the call.

Jeff explained about the bug. Even admitted the source fingered was by inference rather than any solid chain of evidence. “But it’s the only thing I got back at all. I have no idea why and just a third party opinion of who. If that suggests anything to you or fits with what else you know I hope it’s helpful. It meant nothing to me.”

“I know exactly why and precisely who,” Weir said grinding his teeth. “I’m going to kill the son of a bitch, and I owe you one,” he allowed. “Don’t worry,” he continued, seeing Jeff’s shocked expression. “Researching you a bit more, I’ve had people tell me you have regrets for the things you’ve had to do. Let me assure you, no innocent people will be harmed by the information you shared.”

All Jeff could do was nod, shocked, before Weir disconnected.

Jeff called Chen right back and shared the recording.

“That’s unbelievable he’d confess such intentions. The man was thoroughly caught up in his emotions. Normally I’d think he was betrayed by a love interest to be that angry, but the circumstances don’t fit.” Chen said, face distorted in concentration. Then his countenance smoothed back to normal. “I predict he has issues with a business partner. What he is working on is the only thing that could be so important to him.”

“That may be, but I didn’t intend to incite him,” Jeff said.

Chen shrugged. “You didn’t lie. Their issues are between them. You do want him to succeed, don’t you? One might assume this unknown person wants to stop it. Any opposition, anything that challenges their security, may also remove it from your purview.”

“There’s that,” Jeff agreed. “I’d very much like to see him continue his work and hopefully confirm some other facets of his theory.”

“But you aren’t interested in allying with him?”

“It couldn’t be just him. You can’t do business with an Earthie and not everybody to whom he’s connected. I’d be involved with his Brazilian partners. Almost certainly the Brazilian government, because that’s how they do things down there. Nothing happens without government permission and usually some way to tax and take a cut of the action. And he’s North American, which could be a complication even if he doesn’t want it to be. If he does produce anything useful they will consider it theirs, just like the Chinese laid claim to my step mum’s work. They’re all natural thieves,” Jeff said.

“You’re harsh, but I can’t say you’re wrong,” Chen said sadly.

*

“How odd,” Jeff said reading his pad. “The North Americans have banned the exchange of bits as illegal securities. I’m not even sure how any got to North America.”

“People often end up with a few foreign bills and coins after their vacation or a business trip. But it’s still regarded as money. This is just North America being snarky about you,” April said.

“You back them too,” Jeff pointed out.

“And Heather, and Irwin and his Private Bank for that matter, but we’re not notorious,” April said.

“Their currency isn’t doing that well,” Jeff said, not commenting on his special status. “I’m sure it’s a sore point. I’d just as soon not deal with the complication of them circulating on Earth, but you can’t tell people where to take them. I can imagine people would chaff under the restriction of needing a hundred of them to redeem. Then some idiot will complain they are a fraud because he can’t turn in any odd number he wants. If I have to weigh out gold to the nearest ten milligrams accurately and convey it, that destroys the utility of them completely. Even if I made a machine to dispense gold in such small fractions, maybe as wire, the time and accounting expense would ruin us.”

“You could make a teller machine to both validate the card and dispense the gold,” April suggested. “No need to involve a human at all.”

Jeff scowled. “I could, but I don’t want to,” he admitted.

When April didn’t say anything he softened. “But I’ll keep it in mind for when there are a lot of them in circulation and we don’t even want to bother with a hundred at a time.”

“Better to do that than let them get away with a slur on your character,” April told him, looking peeved. “That’s why they called them securities instead of money. They are insinuating you may not redeem them. They damn well know who issues them.”

“Do you think so?” Jeff asked mildly, far less jealous of his reputation than April. “By their standard no Earth currency is a security. The point they seem to be missing is they should be. But people aren’t as stupid as they think. They know. Or at least those who matter. For what exactly can you redeem a North American dollar? You never know from day to day. Isn’t it odd, when you think about it, that you have to take your dollar to a third party to get anything for it? All the issuers will give you for it is cancellation of debt to them.”

*

Karl was too tired to be hungry. He looked at the stir-fry and picked up a fork determined to get it all inside him. He’d left one day this week without eating and just fell into bed exhausted. In the morning that was a mistake. He was ravenous and he didn’t get breakfast as part of his pay. He got lunch but quickly found out he couldn’t eat heavily and go back to work. He’d found a couple granola bars in his things from home, and ate those for his breakfast that morning. They weren’t nearly enough to do the job. And then he had nothing for the evening.

Aaron the cooks helper had been astonished he was so stupid, but at least he told him what to do. Karl thought it would be theft and pilfering to take food home, but Aaron assured him nobody would say anything if he got extra rolls and jelly or saved a portion of his meal to take home and eat cold for breakfast.

He was still dubious, but nobody said a word to him when he rolled a slice of ham in bread, folded it in a napkin, and stuffed it in his pocket. He was prepared to blame Aaron if anyone called him on it. Aaron’s kindness ended there however. His attempt to solicit a loan until payday only produced laughter.

If he wanted to eat free he also had to eat it in the kitchen at the end of his shift. He couldn’t come back later and eat in the dining room unless he wanted to pay. On the other hand he could put as much as he pleased on his plate and get bread and stuff like pickles or hot peppers. Aaron warned him not to take too much and throw it away or the cook would have a fit. So far he’d eaten everything.

There wasn’t much packaged in disposable bags or containers, and what was packed that way got the empties put in the recycle bins. Tomorrow he’d have to ask Aaron if it was OK to use a bread bag to take stuff home instead of a napkin. It would still get recycled after all, just with a little added delay. He thought it wouldn’t be as stale in the morning and he wouldn’t have crumbs in his pocket.

Karl had to be on the job a two week period and then he’d get paid a week later. They said they’d open an account for him. He’d been shocked his phone no longer worked to buy stuff. He’d never really thought of it as using his mom’s account before. The fact it wasn’t really his phone either hadn’t occurred to him. His mom had been nice enough not to demand it back. But it wasn’t on her account now. He’d find that out when the service fee for com was posted against his new bank account next month.

Security had picked up all his clothing and personal items from his mom’s apartment and delivered them to the barracks. There were only three bunks open and all were the same and on the top third level, so he left everything in the locker assigned to that bunk where they’d dumped them. He didn’t own a lock and had no way to buy one, so his locker remained open to the world.

It said a lot about the sad state of his wealth and possessions that nobody appeared interested enough to even rummage through them. They were unchanged in the same heap every night as he left them that morning. It was a good thing the barracks had a vacuum tumbler to freshen his clothing before work, because he no more had money to pay for laundry than he had folding skills to make the pile in the locker neat and organized. He had three pants, five shirts, and an extra pair of shoes. That was a lot, because most clothing was lifted from Earth and expensive. You couldn’t just wear footies at work.

*

“Dave’s working on something else,” Jeff said. “I suspect it’s another drone for James Weir, but they’re keeping tighter security on this one. He has a big chunk of the shop curtained off, not just a tarp thrown over it. I refuse to snoop inside his shop. We have a good relationship with the man, and if I sour that, other fabricators aren’t as good. Even if he didn’t say anything, others might pick up on the fact we were estranged if I alienate him.”

“Whatever he’s building must be bigger. Do you think he might be going for a manned ship next?” April asked. “What would you do if you were him?”

“I’d be terrified to send anybody, even a volunteer. We simply don’t know if it’s survivable. The drone was able to reach a sufficient velocity to make a transition, but did you see it?” Jeff asked. “The thing was like lace. It must have burned every bit of its fuel. I suspect his fusion reactors are improved too. I’ve never seen containment devices like it had added on, but I’m not sure it could make even the initial transition with the extra mass of a pilot and life support.”

“You keep saying, I think, and I suspect,” April said. “You have some pretty detailed pix of the thing. Why don’t have some experts do a really detailed analysis of it? Get some numbers for mass and how much power it had to produce to accelerate like we saw.”

“I could do it myself but I don’t have time,” Jeff complained.

“Understandable, but who could you hire?” April demanded.

“That’s awkward too. Normally I’d have asked Dave to do such a vehicle analysis, but it’s obvious I can’t ask him. I mean I could… look how easily he could do it. It’s all in his files already!”

“There’s a half dozen small shops who could do the same thing, aren’t there?” April asked.

“Yeah, but they all work with each other and Dave. Any of them I ask might let him know I’m trying to compile the specs on something he built. It would be the same as asking him.”

“Not at all,” April insisted. “You saw something in a very public venue. Asking somebody with engineering knowledge to analyze it is not at all the same as trying to extract it from the fellow who is obligated to keep it confidential. One is morally slimy. The other irreproachable.”

Jeff frowned. “I depend on you for social standards. If you say so I’ll depend on it.”

“Trust me. It’s perfectly normal to want to know about the drone. Nobody is going to be upset with you for that except maybe James Weir, and he doesn’t get a vote. His reasons for wanting it to be secret are pragmatic not moralistic.”

“OK, I have a frame guy who can do it well enough. I’ll put him on it today,” Jeff decided.

*

“Sweetie, I’m going to ISSII day after tomorrow. Then on to Sandman to make the transfer to Mars. Want to have dinner at the Fox and Hare before I have to go?” April’s grandfather asked.

“I’d love to, tonight please. It’ll be a last taste of civilization for a while for you. I doubt they have nightclubs on Mars yet. At least their website makes it sound very frontier-like.”

“We’ll see,” Happy said dubiously. “I suspect a lot of that is public relations. We had luxuries and entertainment when we were the second ship to ever make orbit around the world. They might emphasize that to keep down the number of tourists distracting them. Also they aren’t really independent. They still depend on tax dollars from the participants. Voters like the idea of a frontier and exploration, but they seem to want monk-like sacrifice from the noble pioneers. They’d hate to pay for them to be more comfortable and have more fun than the folks paying their way.”

“I imagine you’ll still find a poker game,” April predicted.

Happy smiled. “I hope so. I’m taking six decks of cards, in case they’re hard to come by.”

“Make sure what their laws are,” April suggested. “I’d hate to hear you got deported because you broke some silly gambling laws. I have no idea whose legal system they use, do you?”

“There are seven supporting nations, and people from a number of non-supporting nations, just like Home. They’d never be able to rationalize the different systems. So it’s run by a rule book and executive council. The rule book can only be updated once a year unless it’s a life or death emergency, because people got upset with it having changes every few weeks. I read it. Some of it seems silly, but I didn’t see any deal breakers.”

“What seemed silly?” April wondered.

“You can own specimens of Mars rocks or soil,” Happy said, “and even bring them back with you when you leave Mars, but you can’t display mineral specimens in your living quarters.”

“That is odd. There’s probably a story behind that,” April decided.

“If I ever find out I’ll let you know,” Happy promised. “I’m not sure I want to ask. I may sound critical if I start questioning the reasons behind all their rules immediately.”

*

April called and asked for a table. Usually she added a disclaimer that if they were booked up she wouldn’t take a table from a paying customer. Detweiler, the partner who was the club maître d’, even told her when it was booked solid a couple times. Tonight she didn’t ask. If she was imposing a bit to exercise owner’s rights it was a very special occasion. If they had to bring out an extra table and scrunch them all a little closer together. She knew they could do that.

Her grandpa met her at her cubic and walked her down to the club. It was totally unnecessary but sweet of him. He was sort of old fashioned that way. He’d forgone his usual Hawaiian shirt and dressed very conservatively for the occasion, even wearing a long sleeved dress shirt, but no tie.

The club had a sign on the corridor with a cartoonish fox and hare. She hadn’t designed it, but she’d conceived it and had it made. It had a fox in checkered vest and glasses, with a hare holding a big old German clay pipe. The sign said, “Wo sich Fuchs und Hase Gute Nacht sagen,” which a friend had explained to her was the German equivalent to the American phrase “The Middle of Nowhere.” They were standing on snow before a leafless woods with a twilight sky. It still amused her.

Detweiler showed them to a small table, second row from the stage. There was still another bigger table empty behind them so she didn’t feel guilty. Their waiter appeared with a tray of appetizers before they even had their napkins in their laps.

“Taking up mind reading?” her grandpa asked, but not in a mean way, amused rather.

“A favor from the couples at the first banquette,” he said. “Attribute the clairvoyance to them.”

They looked up and former President Wiggen and her writer husband Ben Patsitsas were dining in the private alcove. With them were the exiled sovereigns of Spain, apparently back in good graces of their nation in fact, but not publically yet.

Happy waved and Ben acknowledged it with a tilt of the head, so he must be their benefactor.

“They… those four, seem an item to me now,” Happy said, but his voice framed it as a question.

“That’s the conclusion I came to also,” April agreed.

Happy seemed content with that confirmation, and didn’t pursue it further. April was just as happy with that, as it seemed to make her grandpa uncomfortable. Maybe because they were his age. She wouldn’t say anything against any of the four. They were all good people.

The radishes carved as roses were almost too pretty to eat, and they were cupped in something green like a real bud. She wondered idly what they used to make them stick. Everything on the tray was a delight to the eye. They didn’t say anything for awhile skewering the tidbits and trying the different combinations of them in the three sauces. The carving held the sauce nicely.

“I want to give you your going away present before the lights dim and they start the acts,” April said. She laid a block of cards down with a thin ribbon holding a memory card on top.

“Bits?” Her grandpa seemed surprised at that. He carefully tugged the knot loose to remove the ribbon. A quick shuffle confirmed they were gold certificates.

“When you find a poker game on Mars, I’m betting the pots are eclectic,” April predicted. “You’ll have a mix of currencies if not IOUs. I thought I’d stake you a little. It’s only two hundred bits, but I wanted them to fit in your pocket. The memory card is an image. I wasn’t sure you had mass or space allowance to take the original, but I have possession of it and will hold it for you. It’s hard to see on a little tablet screen so I suggest you look at in your spex.”

Happy lifted an eyebrow, intrigued, and slid the card in his pad. When he sent the link to his spex they darkened deeply to display it on the inside. April was satisfied when his mouth fell open and then slowly curled into a smile.

“Lindsey drew that. She assured me she took the time to research everything from files, but if there’s anything wrong, anything out of period, she’d like to know.”

The center of the drawing had two suited workers on the opposite sides of a truss. Happy was facing the view point a little more than the other fellow. He had on his helmet painted as a knight’s helm. His face was clearly seen and he showed the tip of his tongue in the corner of his mouth and was giving a right eyed wink, which was a sarcastic ‘right… ‘ in helmet talk.

The other fellow had his head turned further, but Lindsey consulted the records and made sure he was recognizable in profile as Chuck Fenton. The turned head was necessary to display the nude on the side of the helmet. The ample woman was lent a small degree of modesty by a strategically located explosive rivet kit. Some of the open kit was floating away, and her one arm disappeared around the back of the helmet to an unseen companion. The kit on the helmet was mirrored exactly by the one Chuck was using, but with better control.

The background was muted as in all Lindsey’s art, but some of the station frame being build was attached to the end of the central truss in the lower right corner. The opposite lower corner had the arc of the Earth showing, and between the two men but high enough not to be distracting, was a pale moon.

“She nailed it,” Happy confirmed. “The lighting is fantastic. Most people can’t get that right.”

“Lindsey just couldn’t figure out any believable way to show the other side of his helmet,” April said. “She asked if I’d allow her to do another drawing with you both placing a hull plate to show the other side. She wanted to do that one offset to one side a little, with an obsolete scooter detailed in the background. I commissioned this as an exclusive but she offered the next one with print rights in exchange for the original. Since it impinges your privacy I told her I’d leave it up to you.”

“Make her a counter offer,” Happy requested. “I’d like her to give you the two originals as a gift. You have nice stuff on your bulkheads, but I think you can find room for these. If not you can always put them in the entry or the loo. After she has them done I’d like a full sized print of each. I have an annual mass allowance in my contract and they can catch up with me on Mars. Just make sure it’s shipped in a hard tube not fiber board. Maybe a piece of titanium conduit to protect them. If you want to release her from the exclusivity clause I don’t care. It can sweeten the deal for her to be able to sell the prints as a series if she wants. I wouldn’t mind being a famous face on a Lindsey print.”

“I’m sure she’ll take that deal,” April said. “You do realize her prints are going for a half Solar each in runs of a hundred? You don’t want to ask for a cut of that, with your face selling them?”

“No, but if she wants to take the series past two we can get a little greedy. How much do her original drawings go for now? I know she’s sold a lot on Earth, not even trying to market them there.”

“I’ve had people send me text messages from Earth and offer me twenty Troy ounces for the big one in my apartment. I don’t have any idea how they even know I own it. It has to be by word of mouth because it’s never had prints made of it. They must just be going by a description too, because I’ve never seen an image on the network, not even a bad spex image, squared back up and sharpened.”

“You’re awfully picky who you let in your place. I can’t imagine any of your friends photographing your art without asking, but just telling the story that you own an original they might not think harmful. Even on Home I think that unwise, because it makes you a target for burglary,” Happy said. He thought about it briefly. “Somebody might have taken a pic of a friend or a group together and never thought about your art being the background of the image. Things get loose like that all the time without any malicious intent.”

“This is almost as big and I’m sure she’ll make the other to match it. So you are probably gifting me with a fifty Solar pair of paintings,” April warned him. It seemed extravagant. She should have given him a thousand bits…

“I am neither impoverished to worry about it, nor worried for my future. Anyway… I’m about to sell off some zero G real estate to some youngsters for a bundle of money. They’ll be a couple decades paying enough on that to keep me comfortably in sandwiches and footies without any other income.” Happy said, smiling widely.

April forced a smile. Happy hadn’t definitely said he’d sell the north hub cubic to them before now, but the joy was tempered by his intimation that she could expect the price not to be discounted. That was only fair. He’d worked and invested years to own that. Not like a gift painting that just fell in his lap.

Chapter 11

“Oh ho! Jeff exclaimed. “Have you looked at your messages from Chen lately?

“Not for hours. If it’s really important he has my code to push it through,” April reminded him.

“Our buddy James Weir, has enrolled in a piloting course.”

“Which sort?” April asked.

“Orbit to orbit,” Jeff said. “He is insane of course, if he intends to pilot a ship through a quantum transition with no idea what happens on the other end.”

April shrugged. “Neil Armstrong probably fits that definition of insane. If he’d waited until it was safe the city would have a different name, maybe Russian. I know I wouldn’t fly that hunk of junk he trusted. But where would we be if he hadn’t?”

“I’ve looked at Jim’s bio online since we met,” Jeff said. “He’s an academic. He has no business piloting an experimental craft on a high risk journey. You know he isn’t going to build up any hours first.”

“I bet he hires a senior pilot and goes as number two. Just like when I flew the Happy Lewis with Easy. I think he’s too smart to do otherwise.”

“That makes sense,” Jeff agreed. “But I predict he’ll be logged on as in command for the transition to have his name in the history books.”

“Didn’t one of the polar explorers do that?” April asked. “I think one of his minions actually got ahead and reached the pole, but he had him back off and went ahead to claim it alone. Silly really, it was his expedition, so his achievement anyhow.”

“Yeah, but I can’t remember which pole. You’ll have to look it up,” Jeff said.

“While we are predicting… people are never going to say transition. Maybe military crews if they’re ordered to use it. My money is on jump,” April insisted. “Short and descriptive.”

“You’re probably right,” Jeff agreed. “It’s a miracle no matter what you call it.”

*

“Holy… “

“Yeah, it’s precious, but it’s not hallowed ground,” April smirked.

“This is your money too,” Jeff said looking rattled. He checked his message again to make sure he read it right. “That’s about a hundred million USNA dollars.”

“It is, and my apartment is probably forty eight or fifty million dollars now the way they are losing value. If you could get anybody to sell you cubic for toilet paper dollars,” April reminded him pointedly.

“OK, point taken,” Jeff said, “but we could set up in one of my housing modules. There are three in place already and they are starting to finish them off inside.”

“Are you going to take the shuttle over every time you have to load up foils?” April asked.

“No. I’d probably have to train somebody to do it,” Jeff admitted.

“You have the present fabricators shock mounted, even as massive as the north hub is. What’s going to happen when somebody slams a hatch in a connected module?” April demanded. “Your whole run of foils will be trashed.”

“Even some loud music might be a problem,” Jeff was forced to admit.

“Are you going to kick Eric out and make him start printing bits somewhere else?”

“That might also be a problem. We need to set up another machine to make more of them actually, and I know he isn’t going to commute a half hour over to the new housing every day to run them. It would have to be a separate module to have enough room. We’re only using about a third of the cubic in your Grandpa’s. But there just isn’t anywhere here to move him.”

“Why not?”

“I checked yesterday and there isn’t a zero G vacancy of any size available,” Jeff revealed.

“And if there is one that comes open I submit it will go to a cash buyer,” April said. “Happy is offering us twenty years to pay.”

Jeff sighed. “At a set rate too. Four percent interest figured in the payment, and I expect the rate to go up, so that’s a bargain too. I’ll do it, but it’s hard for me to commit to such a huge number.”

“A unique property, at good terms. From what you just said, if we had to, we could resell it. It gives us a secure place with room to expand. Direct docking and accessible to where we live.”

Jeff just nodded agreement, looking distressed. It was an emotional issue for him.

“Call Heather and talk to her about it,” April insisted. “It’s her funds too. Make her really listen since this is so big, not just rubber stamp what we’re doing here. If she has reservations I’ll reconsider. You do the talking and I’ll listen in. I’m convinced to do it already, so I might fall into trying to sell it even if I’m trying to be fair.”

April listened to Jeff summarize the potential purchase, and that ideally they should reach a decision today since Happy was leaving. He presented it fairly despite his doubts.

“I got the impression he was very confident we’d accept,” Jeff said, at the end. “I think he’ll be shocked if we don’t, but this is business. I don’t think we should feel obligated to do it for friendship.”

“No, I think he’d be shocked if we pass because it is very favorable terms,” Heather said. “Not because he’s April’s grandpa or for friendship. Now it’s true we plan to expand here at Central, but none of it is zero G of course. You are going to be renting zero G residential units soon. I imagine some of them will house businesses, but really, they aren’t suitable for industrial use. You don’t want that kind of traffic docking all the time. I don’t think you are going to see new zero g cubic for sale until somebody builds a companion habitat. How far forward do you think that would be?”

“It’s a matter of quantity. Our economy is healthier,” Jeff said. “But it isn’t big enough yet to fund such a huge project. Even with a worldwide slowdown a lot of smaller Earth nations have economies much bigger than ours. Some of their numbers might be very mundane things, but countries are like individuals. If they have a higher income then they’ll have more disposable income for non-essentials.

“If there is a recovery they will quickly have a surplus for such megaprojects bigger than anything we could muster. I can’t imagine another habitat being actually started, that is, actual assembly commencing, for another ten years. The financing has to be there, design work done and a start made at assembling the tools and personnel. The tools and scooters and things that were used to assemble M3 are outdated or scrapped, and it’ll all be new.”

“So we would have a rare if not unique property for twelve or thirteen years before you’d expect there might be competing cubic for sale?” Heather asked.

“That’s a realistic assessment,” Jeff agreed.

“I’d say we’re safe in this as an investment for over half the period we’d be paying on it,” Heather said. “when such other space does become available do you really think there will be such a glut of it that it’ll drive the value of ours down?”

Jeff thought on it a bit. “That could happen, given unusual circumstances. Maybe with peace in China and a rational government in North America helping the Earth economy boom. But I think it more likely that there will be tremendous pent up demand. That all the new space will be quickly occupied, sold out ahead even, and prices are unlikely to drop. At worst they’d plateau for awhile. But I’m risk averse. I hate to owe money. Especially this much.”

“We pledged our fortunes together before the revolution,” Heather said, picking her words carefully. “I realize it’s been some time since any of us have needed to kick in a little extra. I can’t deliver up a chunk of cash today, but you seem more concerned about twelve years out, or more. I feel confident to promise to contribute five hundred Solars a year starting three years from now. That should cover any shortfall from our usual income.”

“What did you do?” Jeff demanded. “Find a gold mine?”

“Yes,” Heather answered, without any trace of humor.

Jeff and April couldn’t even crack a funny at that. It was a stunning amount.

“I may need a little bit of help with the practical side of selling a mixed bag of commodities, various metals and volatiles, but I’m sure you know who to ask or hire. Does that make you feel more confident about obligating us to a twenty year note?”

“That’s enough to convince me,” Jeff admitted. “You’re confident about this income?”

“I estimated it very conservatively,” Heather assured him.

“Then I vote we have April confirm the deal with her grandpa, if you agree.”

“Please do,” Heather said. “I think we’ll be very unhappy if we let that cubic get away.”

“I thought of something,” April said. “If you have any lingering doubts, call one of the brokers and tell them you are acquiring a large zero G property on the north hub, and ask what sort of market value they think it would reasonably have next year, if you decide not to retain it.”

“No, I don’t want to do that,” Jeff said. “But your point is well taken. I really do know how they’d answer. They’d have a hard time naming a value, because there aren’t any sales to compare, and an honest one would tell me I am insane to consider letting it go. I just wasn’t ready to sign off on this, even though I knew it was a good deal. If I ask a broker that they’ll hound me every day to know if we want to sell it. I’d have to filter their messages and avoid them in the corridors. Go ahead April, call your grandpa and you can sign off on the deal for the partnership.”

“Good. He’s probably wondering if we forgot about it.” And she went to do it.

*

The contract, when April shared it with them, had a note attached. Not really an addendum. It said:

“Please deposit payments for the property at the Central Branch of the System Trade Bank with the funds in deep safe lunar storage. I intend to send other funds from time to time. When the bank has a branch on Mars I’ll transfer a portion of the funds there.” – Robert Lewis

“All in good time,” Jeff said.

“I gave Gramps a couple hundred bits,” April said, “to use for poker money.”

“I haven’t forgotten you were interested in getting a foothold on banking services for Mars.”

“And Armstrong, and maybe a teller machine on ISSII,” April reminded him.

“That, I’d kind of forgotten, but I might be able to get one in New Las Vegas easier,” Jeff said.

“Even though it is USNA controlled?”

“The casinos want to make money. We wouldn’t make a big announcement that we were putting a machine in, just a quiet deal with a casino to put one in their private cubic. They would refer clients who inquired to it without a fuss. Not out on the public corridor.”

“You surprise me. Do we really have connections to do such a thing?” April asked.

“We don’t, but certain of Eddie Persico’s relatives have more than ample connections inside the gaming industry,” Jeff said.

“You want to deal with the mafia again? I thought it made you uncomfortable.”

“The Russian mafia was scary, even dealing with them third hand. But the good old North American mafia with Eddie as a go between? They did exactly what they were contracted to do, took their money and were polite. They didn’t try to kill me, which is more than I can say for trying to deal with Earth governments,” Jeff reminded her.

April just tilted her head to acknowledge that. She didn’t say what she was thinking, that perhaps the mafia was smarter than the government. If you run the Chicago mafia you treat a fellow with jumbo thermonuclear weapons politely, because he can remove Chicago from your life and business. You might not think he would do such a thing. April was certain he wouldn’t in any circumstances she could imagine, but there are certain bets no sane person makes at any odds. A lesson the North American government or governments, whoever seemed to be ahead among the factions down there at the moment, were obviously still learning.

*

Karl had a message on his phone when he took lunch. It was from the System Trade Bank inviting him to activate his new account. He didn’t have time to read it and eat. The head cook’s rule was only emergency override messages during working hours. Aaron informed him one guy had already been fired because his wife sent him emergency messages every day. Emergencies like there was no gin in the apartment or the kids wouldn’t stop fighting.

Aaron wasn’t eating. He disappeared for lunch some days and Karl had no idea where he went. When he went back to work he asked Aaron if he’d have supper with him and help him with the message from the bank. He didn’t think about it all afternoon, because it didn’t seem important. He’d been expecting to be paid and Aaron was already being paid, so he’d know all about it.

Aaron was really irritated with him that he had no clue how to set up his bank account. How would he? He got an allowance transferred off his mom on payday and that was it. He could swipe it at the pay points and once it was gone it was gone. His mom put in all the numbers and his sub-account wouldn’t show any of that stuff.

He got two tenths of a Solar every two weeks, and his mom had given him half that when he lived at home. Also there were four bits debited already for his phone service for the last two weeks. He told Aaron how unhappy he was.

“Dude… you are getting fed and have a place to sleep, access to plain vacuum laundry and showers and sanitary. You don’t even have to buy your own bath soap. I looked up your mom and she’s high-powered help at what she does. She could afford to pamper you. A trained monkey could do most of what you are doing but he’d cost more to keep. Be happy they haven’t built a robot to do it.”

That was insulting, but he didn’t dare make Aaron mad at him. He was about the only one at work who cared to talk with him. He even nodded like he agreed when Aaron told him to hold a little back and not spend it. He’s have another pay in two weeks wouldn’t he?

*

“I’m having a weapon retrieved from high Earth orbit,” Jeff revealed in conference with April and Heather. “I have some ideas about applying a gravitational solution to Jim Weir’s equations using the quantum fluid from it. It’s the sort of thing where I can collect some data without risking the material.”

“Are you going to rent a drone again from Dave?” April asked.

“I don’t think so. This will be a fairly compact device. I think I’ll just build it in a framework and put a grapple coupling on it so we can grab it on the nose of Dionysus’ Chariot. We can carry it off from M3 a distance in the hold for privacy, and shove it out the door and grapple it. We can carry some very small drones,” Jeff demonstrated with his hands just how small, “to measure the disturbances the device creates at several distances. They will help us take the device in and out of the hold too. I don’t want to bring a rigger along. Then we can take it back aboard and fasten it down to return. I won’t be surprised if it takes some changes and tinkering with it to get the maximum effect.”

“Just watch to make sure nobody shadows you like you did Weir,” Heather suggested.

“Indeed. The camera on the exit port was something we should have done a long time ago. Right now we have some people assembling a set of wide angle cameras similar to the sky watch cameras that look for asteroid and comets. They will run with software to tell us about the traffic around Home and provide automated alerts for unusual events,” Jeff said.

“This thing won’t actually let the Chariot jump?” April asked.

“You mean make a quantum transition? No, it’s going to take more velocity than the Chariot can produce, and I won’t be able to generate a gravitational gradient on the same scale as James’ electrostatic field. But the instrumentation in the drones should give me a good idea how much more field strength we’ll need to make it work.

“I do have a report back on how the Brazilians got such a high velocity out of that drone. There were so many confusing things that didn’t add up. The spectrum from the open polywell reactors showed both hydrogen and helium. The lack of enough pressure vessels for reaction mass and fuel was also odd. Also there was a covered section to the rear, but we couldn’t see how it could contain any known drive system. The answer is it doesn’t. It probably has a secondary system to generate electricity from the drive stream, but the drive stream is fed down the center axis of all three reactors in common. The exhaust plume isn’t generated in a separate system using power from the polywell reactors. It bleeds it out of the reactors directly through a hole in the confinement. It ups the efficiency by going direct.”

“Could you stack as many as you want in a line like that?” April asked.

“Now that’s a very good question” Jeff allowed. “The stream is all positive charged, so it would tend to spread. But I don’t know the dynamics of their plasma flow. They must be able to refocus it back to a point at the transition from reactor to reactor. But how many times? Even if three reactors is the limit they can gang them up side by side. What we can’t figure out at all is the helium part. They’re using helium 3 for fuel, and I have no idea where they could be getting enough for the fuel load this needed.”

“Nobody has filed any patents or offered it for sale?” Heather asked.

“No, and I thought I was the only crazy person keeping trade secrets,” Jeff said wryly.

“You and the Loonies… ” Heather said. “I need to tell you that Mo is not only going to start mining for minerals and metals, but he said we’ll get volatiles, including Helium 3. He even has a scheme for storing it efficiently at the testing stage. So I bet they got it off the moon.”

“That would be a wonder. It’s very leaky stuff,” Jeff said.

“Is this something we want?” Heather asked. “We’re going to have stockpiles here of all sorts of materials. There will be different items we’ll have more than the market can absorb. We’re separating it all, so there is little advantage in dumping it back together as waste. If we have need of something for our own use, like Helium 3, I won’t offer it for sale or even publicly acknowledge we’re processing it. I don’t even know what it goes for in the Earth market.”

Jeff looked to be thinking hard for a moment.

“Yes. If you can afford to set it aside, I’d like you to save that for us. The price has occasional spikes up and down, but has stayed pretty much within the same order of magnitude. Most of the time a gram of helium 3 has been worth an ounce of gold.”

“Wow, I had no idea,” Heather admitted.

“Well, it’s not like you can make a necklace of it,” April said.

*

Happy’s cabin was as close as you could get to a hot slot without having to pull it open like a drawer or crawl in from the end. He had a cubic meter plus a little of storage. Given his mass allowance that was generous. He hadn’t thought to bring a bag of popcorn to fill it up. He was a spacer, so having anything out loose just never occurred to him.

The only thing he did to personalize the space was put the image he’s been given of Chuck and him working together on the screen to display when it wasn’t in use. He was already anticipating getting its mate, and his imagination was working at how Lindsey would render it. She was way beyond just good.

Most of his clothing and things like his playing cards he left in his duffle which filled the bottom of the locker. He repositioned the shelf down snuggly against it and put the three outfits he intended to wear in transit on the shelf. A very light but tough clear plastic box held his tooth brush, comb and similar items. He had a power trimmer with a vacuum and intended to grow a beard during the passage.

From inside the lid of the kit he extracted a camera Mackay Christian and his security group sold him. It was the size of a postage stamp, if anyone younger than him had any idea what a postage stamp was, and not much thicker. The edge tapered off even thinner. It recorded video and he had it set for a wide angle and to only record when his pad was not present in the room, but there was motion.

It had a sticky back that would stop gripping after fifty or so applications if you didn’t clean the mounting surface carefully. No need to touch it again, it would talk to his pad when interrogated with robust encryption. Happy carefully picked a place that would allow it to see both the hatch and his locker. He gave the bulkhead a swipe with a sanitary wipe and applied the camera. Over the next couple seconds it changed color until it perfectly matched the bulkhead.

Supposedly only emergency crew had access to his room and only if the captain or xo declared an emergency and unlocked the code from the ship’s computer. He didn’t believe that for a second.

Chapter 12

Aaron was almost done with his supper. Karl figured he better ask him for the favor before he stood up. Aaron wasn’t big on patience to stand and listen when he was ready to march off.

“Keith Petros has a new concert recording out that everybody says is just tremendous. Do you think you could loan me two bits until payday to get it?” Karl asked.

“You’re broke before payday?” Aaron asked disgusted.

“There was stuff,” Karl said, and shrugged.

“And you didn’t keep any back to dip into?” he asked further.

“Well yeah,” Karl lied, “good thing because I needed it too.”

“I won’t loan it to you, but I’ll pay you a bit to run an errand for me,” Aaron offered.

“The download is two bits. He’s got a following. The guy is worth it though,” Karl said, enthused.

“Petros may be worth two bits, but the errand isn’t,” Aaron said. “No deal.”

“I’ll run your errand and owe you another,” Karl offered.

“Run the errand and owe me two,” Aaron demanded.

Karl didn’t like that and didn’t say anything.

“Or wait until payday,” Aaron suggested. “No skin off my nose.”

“OK, now and two whenever,” Karl agreed. Aaron keyed his pad and aimed it at Karl’s. The transfer registered and Karl immediately bought his music.

“Here, take this,” Aaron instructed, handing him a standard memory card between thumb and forefinger. It had no printing and could be any size. Probably cheap generic if it didn’t have a logo.

“Go down by the cabbage mines, on the tunnel to the elevator. Walk in the tunnel a couple meters and there’s a glow panel up high on the wall. Just sit this on top of the panel and leave it there. You’re as tall as me, so you can reach it if you stretch. Feel along the top and if there’s another one up there bring it back to me.”

“Now?” Karl asked.

“You’ve been paid already haven’t you? Now.”

“OK, Karl agreed and wolfed down his last couple bites and headed out the back access. He didn’t play his new music. He wanted to savor it in his bunk undistracted.

There wasn’t anything on top of the light. He felt carefully with his fingers hooked over the back edge and slid it off the end so if it was there he wouldn’t knock it off behind. There wasn’t any gritty dust which surprised him. He left the card and headed back to the singles barracks.

*

April and Jeff were sitting quietly reading. April had some instrumental music on low.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Jeff suddenly declared.

April didn’t coax him to elaborate. He wouldn’t need it as indignant as he sounded.

“North America went from declaring bits as unregistered securities to making their possession illegal and subject to confiscation.”

“Of course,” April said. “They can’t reach you here to prosecute you for issuing them, so after awhile it must have been obvious to them that the people holding them were uninterested in their opinion of their worth or safety. They don’t like that. Saying that just made them look silly needlessly.”

“So they protect their public by… stealing them?”

“What an ugly word,” April said. “I’ve been reading more economic history. When the Nazis were coming to power they shamed the German people into holding their money in Marks. They made it a point of patriotism to do so. They managed to blame the Jews for the bad economy instead of the reparations from the previous war and the tariffs imposed on them. It probably didn’t help that the Jews were too smart to keep their wealth in Marks and bought tangibles or sent their money off to Switzerland.

“My point being - don’t be surprised if the North Americans start a campaign to blame us for their bad economy. Blaming outsiders is almost a tradition. We did hurt them pretty bad in the war, but they’ve totally failed at any recovery since. And just that one hit on Vandenberg seems to have hurt them all out of proportion to the size of the strike. The infrastructure was just ridiculously delicate and nobody made any effort to harden it for years and years. In any case the public, at least in the rest of the country, seem to be willing to accept almost any external enemy. They are as reluctant to blame their own leaders as those leaders are to accept the blame. The people in southern California may not be so generous.”

“They’ve been working up to that for a long time,” Jeff said. “We’ve been painted as horrible selfish people in their press for years. It seems easy to incite jealousy in people. I’ve never seen a documentary that showed how cramped it is in a normal spacer apartment. Nor have I ever heard of a spacer owning twenty pair of shoes or special sets of dinnerware for holidays, things they regard as normal and unsurprising down there.”

“So, you don’t want to sponsor a counter campaign to try to improve our image?” April asked.

“In North America? The space nuts who sit and watch camera feeds off the habitats, the kids who copied the way you dress and the people who download Lindsey’s art we don’t need to influence. I think the rest are pretty much unreachable while the government controls the news outlets. It would be a waste of time and money to try.”

“Not everyone loves us other places,” April reminded him. “My grandparents caught a lot of flak from friends and neighbors over my mom being a spacer.”

“Yes, but that was their age group, and their age group’s religious objections to life extension. It wasn’t the official government policy, and the vast majority of the business community, even older ones, only care if they can profit from trading with us. A lot of young people would come up if they could. So many it scares me.”

“I hear you. We can only absorb so many without it changing everything,” April agreed.

*

The third day into their voyage Happy went down the corridor to take a shower. He stripped and dumped his dirty clothes in the vacuum cleaner to let it pump down and tumble them while he washed. His plastic toiletry kit, with his pad and phone inside, he took into the shower with him to keep them safe. After, he examined his beard and decided it was too early to start trimming it until it showed some more shape, folded and tucked his freshened clothing under an elbow and returned to his cabin.

The clean outfit and kit went on top of the other in the cabinet, and there was nothing for him to do before bed but read a little more of the novel he was working his way through. He glanced over and didn’t see any message alerts on the com. He sat back on the bunk, there was no room for a loose chair, and pulled the desktop over to him at an angle that let him lean on it with his forearms.

Before he forgot entirely he stretched to retrieved his pad and keyed in the code to check his camera. It didn’t do anything. It should have said, no activity, but it was just a blank screen. When he checked the setting for linked devices the camera was grayed out. The device ran on ambient light and had a mean time to failure of several million hours.

When he looked over he was dismayed to see the camera was visible. It no longer color matched its background. Happy pushed the desktop back and went to the camera. The top was blistered and there were a couple faint sooty marks on the wall beside it. He had to get right down with his nose centimeters away before he picked up a slight scorched odor.

The crew could have told him no personal surveillance equipment was allowed. That wasn’t in the lengthy document they supplied about permissible behavior and getting along with fellow passengers and crew. This was simply sneaky. Somebody had come snooping and covered up his only way of knowing who. Someone moderately skilled at finding and disabling spy devices most people would never notice. Somebody carrying an electronic device to kill other small cameras or bots. He just wondered why the person or persons hadn’t taken the remains of his camera with them while they were at it?

Happy was briefly sorry he hadn’t bought several cameras, or more advanced devices, mobile ones even. He just hadn’t pictured finding himself in such an aggressive environment. He didn’t bother looking at the things he’s left in the cabin. Anybody at the skill level implied by the evidence would have left no traces. Not even for a crime lab.

Tomorrow he’d do a thorough check to find any newly planted devices. They hadn’t been so obvious that they peeled the tape off the com camera built in the desk. But he did check to make sure dark transparent tape hadn’t been substituted for black. Almost everybody automatically covered those up and you could demand they stay uncovered all you want and people wouldn’t accept it. They’d find improbable excuses to lean or drape something over it, discounting a few hopeful exhibitionists. Get insistent about it, as a few companies had tried, and people got inventive and disgusting about what went over the lens. Tonight he just went back to reading his book.

*

“Dave is making me a framework with a grapple post on it,” Jeff said. “It has a shell with easy release catches and a heavy duty power cross through to bring in auxiliary power from the ship instead of building it separately. I can tell it’s driving him nuts trying to figure out what it is. I’m sure he thinks it’s some sort of removable weapon given the power transfer capacity.”

April lifted an eyebrow, theatrically.

“Are you sure it couldn’t be used as a weapon? You mentioned there will be a disturbance when something jumps out. You’d better be careful where you point it until you know more.”

“It would be a very awkward weapon,” Jeff objected. “I have no idea what sort of range it would have. The weapon my step-mum created by accident has very limited range. Collapse a gravitational line into the moon or the Earth and it doesn’t come out the other side. Neither does it have much power at all just a few centimeters from its axis. Now it’s true since it is directional it’s not going to follow an inverse square law.”

“I sort of assumed it followed the inverse square at right angles.” April said.

Jeff actually twitched at that.

“It may… ” His face changed and then came back. He looked irritated and then awed in rapid succession. “I’ve learned to take your assumptions of what is obvious very seriously.”

“Barak too,” he added after a pause. “I can see a way to check exactly what you are describing now. When we get done with this project I’m going to run an experiment in vacuum and get some data on acceleration perpendicular to a collapse line. We need to take a few shots through a massive object, like a lunar mountain, and see just how far it does penetrate.”

“In any case a weapon that requires you to get close to your target and then activating it sends you light years away isn’t very convenient,” April concluded. “But the guts of the thing all fit in a space no bigger than one of your fusion warheads right? Add its own power source and a rocket to deliver it and you can have it activate as it gets close and use it tear the target apart with tidal forces. Not just punch holes in it like your mum’s gravity lance. Actually shred it.

“It might be good sometime to have a warhead that doesn’t go boom big-time and make a mess and a bright display you can see far away. The mechanism will fly off but you don’t need to go with it. If we ever get to where we have all the quantum fluid we want you don’t have to go recover it either.”

Jeff considered that thoughtfully.

“If we ever have enough fluid to test it, which I don’t think is going to happen very soon, it would be nice for a change not to test something by shooting it and hoping it works. But if we ever do that I want a very reliable self destruct on the device. I don’t want someone finding it floating along later and reverse engineering it, or just rehabbing it and using it.”

“A star monster with deely boppers?” April asked, and reached back behind her head and made them with her index fingers, twitching.

Jeff wasn’t amused.

“Make fun after we’ve visited a few stars and found nobody home.”

*

Three days later Aaron sent Karl back to check the top of the light. There wasn’t anything there and he didn’t give Karl anything to drop off. Aaron was so upset that there was nothing there that Karl offered to not count the trip as one of his favors owed. Aaron waved it away and said it wasn’t him.

That was good, but for the next couple days Aaron was extra twitchy. Karl just didn’t say much and walked on egg shells around him. When he got paid he actually held some back in case Aaron asked and also because he really, really didn’t want to get in a bind and have to ask Aaron for a loan or work again when he was so obviously out of sorts.

He’d learned how to cut vegetables into fancy shapes for appetizers, and after work he asked for an omelet one evening and Cook asked him if he looked like his house servant? The man waved at the grill and told him to knock himself out. He’d been surprised Karl made one that only somewhat fell apart. Karl had been watching how it was done. Cook hadn’t called Karl a useless dumb ass in days, so things were going pretty well.

When Aaron sent him back again to the tunnel there still wasn’t anything to retrieve. There were however a couple security guys blocking his way when he went to return. One held a Taser pointed at him and the other stood further back and held a laser on him. The same sort Heather laid handy to her hand when she’d had him in to talk to her. The fellow didn’t lay his finger across the guard either. He had it inside. The crazy thing was he looked afraid of Karl. Then a voice from behind him told him not to turn around and they made him strip down to the buff right in the middle of the public corridor.

They didn’t let him get dressed again either. They wanded him and scanned him and gave him a paper robe to put on before they cuffed him. It didn’t surprise him when they took him back to Heather. She did not look happy with him.

“First thing, start naming the other dead drops you’ve been using so my people can check them and set a cam watching them.”

“I have no idea what a dead drop is,” Karl told her truthfully.

She started to say something and then stopped and looked at him funny.

“The place you went and looked on top of the light. Where else do you go check?”

“Oh, Aaron I work with pays me to run and check it, but he never called it a dead drop.”

Heather looked at the lady Dakota, but didn’t say anything. Dakota got up and left anyway.

“You’ve never read spy novels?” Heather asked Karl.

“I don’t read books,” Karl said, totally unembarrassed.

“Of course not,” Heather said with a sigh. She stopped and seemed to be thinking. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

“Has Aaron ever had you take anything to the light?” Heather asked.

“Just the first time. He seems to keep expecting something back, but I’ve checked it three times now and there’s never anything. He’s been in a lousy mood over it too.”

“What did he have you drop off there?” Heather asked. It seemed to irritate her to need to ask.

“A little memory card, like you’d put in your phone,” he demonstrated the size with a gap between finger and thumb. “It was a cheapie, no logo on it.”

“Didn’t it seem… irregular to you to be asked to do this?” Heather asked.

“It wasn’t regular at all,” Karl agreed. “Just whenever he asked.”

“What I mean is - it’s obviously sneaky. Didn’t it occur to you he was doing something wrong?”

Karl shrugged. “Who doesn’t sometime? I had to sneak to do stuff with my mom or she was on my case every night. If I wanted pix of girls or the music she didn’t like. If I was talking with my friends she didn’t like or made a date to go do stuff with them. I kept one card she could look at and another with all my real stuff on it.”

Heather looked amazed. “I’m curious. Where did you hide it she wouldn’t find it?”

“I just tucked it inside my cheek, on the outside of my teeth. Whichever I wasn’t using.”

“And you never bit on it and broke it or swallowed it?” Heather asked.

“I swallowed it once in my sleep,” Karl admitted. “Looked all around my covers and under the pillow and shook my clothing out… ” He stopped embarrassed, and didn’t describe how he found it. Heather wasn’t about to go there.

Dakota came in with more security and Aaron. Karl hadn’t even realized there were that many of the security guys. He’d never seen more than two together, and didn’t really recognize any of them.

Heather was a lot shorter with Aaron than him. He tried to say he was working for Karl, and she outright laughed in his face. Karl was so shocked at the nerve of the fellow he stood with his mouth hanging open. Aaron didn’t really crack at all until Heather revealed they had the memory Karl had dropped off.

After a long silence he asked, “What happened to the pickup?”

“The driver? He wasn’t allow to go back to Armstrong,” Heather revealed.

“Are you going to hold him to trade?” Aaron asked hopefully. Perhaps hoping for himself.

“Trade for what? I don’t have any spies in Armstrong.”

“I find that very hard to believe,” Aaron said. That was pretty nervy to contradict your captor.

“All we collect is soft intelligence,” Heather informed him. “Whatever workmen and drivers and people with day jobs pick up and occasionally are bright enough to see has value and pass on. We don’t have them count things or take pictures or seek specific information. I haven’t even released any bots for… quite awhile.”

Aaron looked thoughtful.

“I just thought you guys were that good,” he admitted. That seemed to amuse Heather.

“You’re going to be interrogated by brain scan,” Heather informed Aaron. “If you have a poison tooth or something you better use it,” she said, and the idea didn’t seem to bother her.

“We won’t bother to ask questions. Word association is faster and easier. And we did the same to the driver so we have a good base line to build from.”

“Then a walk down to the cabbage mines mulch room and a shot in the back of the head? Is that what happened to the driver?” Aaron asked.

“The driver was one of the original refugees from Armstrong when they stole the rovers and escaped here in a group. His family has a large land holding and the family head is one of my peers. He requested to administrate justice as an family matter. Given he betrayed his blood kin and the head of household is my peer I let them have him. I haven’t seen him since. I’ve no interest if he’s dead or alive, free, enslaved or what. That’s their affair now. I would not have walked him down to the grow rooms. I’d have shot him down right where you stand and made a mess for housekeeping.”

Aaron nodded satisfied with that answer.

“That’s not what I intend to do with you however,” Heather said.

That wasn’t anything Aaron wanted to hear.

“Well, what do you have in mind?” Aaron asked, but it wasn’t hopeful.

“I’m going to let you go back to work. I’m told you are a skilled prep cook. You’ll draw your wages and do as you please, generally. But you are barred by security from leaving Central on commercial conveyance or even going outside an airlock. You will have com, but every word monitored. Your drops will be watched and we’ll see if Armstrong tries to establish contact again. Everybody you know and see will be aware you’re a spy. You won’t be able to scratch without us knowing.”

“That’s a death sentence all the same,” Aaron objected. “I’m bait. They will assume I’ve turned. They can’t imagine anything else, and they will find a way to reach me and kill me.”

“Then you better hope we’re really as good as you thought. And if you get a contact of any kind we’re not going to say a word to you. It’s up to you to assume we know and will let it happen unless you speak up and say you’re afraid to make contact and want our protection.”

“That’s… are you sure I’m not too dangerous to have around?” Aaron asked, defiantly.

“You flatter yourself. We are good enough you won’t get to me. Are you really going to kill the likes of Karl here or some other worker in a fit of spite to take somebody, anybody, with you?”

Karl really didn’t like the sound of that, but he saw Aaron just deflate.

“They’ll give you a day off after quizzing you,” Heather said. “I understand it’s very stressful.” Security took it for a dismissal when Heather looked down, and led him away.

When they started taking the cuffs off Heather didn’t even look up at him. Karl spoke up.

“Am I in trouble? You said I was on probation. Are you angry with me? I can’t tell.”

“Karl… I’m disappointed with you. To what shall I sentence you for being stupid? Do you want to be sent off to Earth? They will eat you alive down there. Go back to work. I can only hope you show more sense with some experience. Learn how to do useful stuff in the kitchen. It isn’t forever. I don’t know the head cook. Even if he’s not nice, ask questions. For God’s sake learn to ask questions when somebody asks you to do something as crazy as what Aaron just did. Will you do that?”

He just nodded yes, timidly, and let the cop lead him out.

Chapter 13

“The French! I should have known! The French sold the Brazilians the Helium 3.”

Jeff looked rattled at April’s outburst. She didn’t usually shout like this.

“How could you possibly know?” Jeff demanded. “I have Chen paying bribes and pressuring people to find their source. I privately asked Jon to put the question to all his security people. I had Eddie pass the question to Jan on ISSII. I even asked Papa-san to keep an ear to the ground, and I hate to ask favors of him, because he always gets double back.”

“I have my own sources,” April said, with a dismissive wave.

“No, really. You enjoy being mysterious, and you have Chen terrified of you because he thinks you know what he’s going to have for breakfast before he has decided, but I really want to know the how of this one,” Jeff demanded.

April shrugged. She knew when Jeff wasn’t going to drop it.

“Eric does courier work for Dave’s shop. He runs parts and supplies from dock to the shop cheaper than they can send somebody. A couple days before Weir’s drone flew they got a French shuttle at dock and he was there to pick up some other stuff. They had a hand carry cryo tank for Dave’s and he volunteered to take it because he was headed there anyway. The crew turned him down and insisted on a hand delivery. He said the guy carried it in both hands like it was primary explosives instead of cryogenics. We know why better of course. It was a fortune in liquid helium 3, and those carriers are OK in zero G, but they are a this-side-up item in gravity or they have big vent losses sat upside down.”

“If you mean the Lunar colony, that’s not France anymore,” Jeff objected. “They negotiated their independence.”

“It’s still Marseilles isn’t it?” April asked. “They didn’t even change the name. And I’m not sure they own any of their own shuttles. They didn’t have any real revolution or fighting. It seems to me they’re still pretty much French in culture. I expect they will still have a lot, a majority really, of the same interests.”

“Maybe all true, but they aren’t going to have a line straight into the French treasury anymore to tap them if they can’t pay their own way. It’s not surprising they are selling Helium or anything else they can to raise revenue. Look at their dealings with Heather.”

Jeff frowned at a thought. “But that’s been weeks ago,” Jeff protested. “He just got around to telling you?”

“No, he drops little text messages on me all the time. Sometimes a couple a day, but I don’t read them all. He isn’t the only one. I have… a number of kids and warehouse workers and dock guys, all telling me anything odd they see.”

Jeff ignored her reluctance to say exactly how big this network happened to be.

“This just didn’t have the right key words to take it to the head of the list, for example he didn’t know it was helium to mention that, and I didn’t think to tag cryogenic to alert me. When I get time I try to go back and zip through them. I never just erase them, even if I don’t read them word for word. Some are just things like - Have seen the owner of UltraChip meeting with the CEO of Gargantuan three times this week. Or - Z-Med had a full cart of cases shipped out today instead of the usual half cart. Must have been about a thousand boxes.”

“You’ve never taken funds to support this,” Jeff said. “You shouldn’t have to pay for it out of your own pocket. No more than I pay Chen and his agents from my share.”

“I don’t have them on a set retainer like you do Chen,” April said. “Most of the dock rats and kids know each other, and I gave Eric a half Solar for this. He’ll brag about it, and I’m fine with that. Do you know how long it takes Eric to make a half Solar running courier and selling obsolete spex and stuff? It seems to be very efficient at motivating the rest of them to watch closely. I think it’s quite cost effective.”

“But this could come back on him, if all these people talk it around, and Dave finds out Eric talked about his business to you. He could drop using him for courier work.”

“You don’t think I told him what datum in the stream made me reward him do you?”

Jeff just looked confused. He couldn’t imagine anything else. People needed some direction on what intelligence you wanted.

“My goodness, not only would people learn to avoid my sources, but if they thought they could guess what would get them paid they’d all start filtering. They don’t have to know what, as long as they see there is an occasional big payout, they keep reporting. It’s kind of like selling lottery tickets.”

Jeff considered the dynamics of that. “And yet, if people go too long unrewarded they may lose heart and stop bothering. I’d think you would need to drop a small payment on them from time to time even if you aren’t paying them a regular retainer.”

“Jeff,” April said, looking a little irked. “Have you ever hear the expression, ‘Don’t teach grandma to make cheese?’ I’ve been doing this since before Heather ever introduced us.”

“Oh… It’s amazing,” Jeff said. “If they’d just let him transport it, we’d never have known.”

“Let that be a lesson,” April agreed. “Just following routine can cover up a lot. I’d say the French must have been running trials with the tech they sold Heather for quite awhile. There isn’t that much He3 in regolith. Especially not in the common stuff on the mares.”

“They probably ran through a couple or three generations of prototype machines,” Jeff decided. “Even if they all worked to some degree and they kept them running they can’t have that much helium. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they have to wait for enough fuel for a manned ship, and beyond that I know they aren’t going to have enough for a series of regular launches. Not until we see the French harvesting the regolith on a big enough scale that Heather can see it from orbit.”

“And Heather will be doing that herself within a year,” April said. “I’m sure the French will watch what Central does too. But they have no reason to think we have the same priorities in what we harvest. They may discard some fractions. Heather mentioned that the He3 is difficult to store. Best we don’t give them any clues that we are keeping everything.”

“Heather needs to claim the better craters away from Central,” Jeff said. “I’ll mention it.”

“Just drop one robot to work on it in a crater. That should be sufficient claim,” April said.

“The French base just had a big transition in government,” Jeff remembered. “I wonder if the new politician really understood what he was trading away when he bought those tunnel machines with this tech?”

“If not, I bet somebody has told him about it by now,” April said.

*

There was no formal dining room on the Sandman. Neither did the ship’s crew keep a separate mess from the civilians. No captain’s table or division between crew and officers. Given rank inflation they were all officers anyway. A lot of passengers ate in their cabins. Happy, though not claustrophobic did want to get out of his cramped cabin. He used the lounge, took his meals in the common mess, and even used the cramped exercise room.

The ship was an oddity in that it had no national registration. There were three sister ships all jointly held by the nations sharing the Mars program. Happy vaguely remembered that they were chartered under the auspices of the United Nations, but had no idea what the current legal fiction was to allow the crew to be rotated among the members. Something similar to ISSII probably.

Happy hadn’t even considered that he might not be held in much esteem on a UN vessel as a citizen of Home. When the UN had declared Home could not occupy a halo orbit in the vicinity of L2 because they hadn’t assigned the location to them they ignored it. When they sent armed vessels past the moon however to enforce it however that was another matter.

The UN had lots of experience sending third world military into other defenseless third world nations to enforce their decrees. They usually were successful as well at spreading disease, looting and rape along the way in accomplishing that. They’d gotten so bold about it they thought they could do it to a technologically superior nation with orbital weapons.

The UN never really was officially disbanded. It simply ceased to exist over a few days because anything with their logo or a blue sign or helmet couldn’t show itself to the sky without being blasted from orbit. Their third world thugs didn’t have to be bombarded to disband. They ceased to be an asset to the organization the day after their first missed pay. Their real estate reverted as abandoned.

The first fellow to interrogate Happy about his politics over dinner got an earful. Happy was patient and tried to explain how things actually worked on Home to him. The fellow couldn’t understand how Happy could not belong to some political party. That’s just how things worked, even if you used a different word than party to describe your factions. After Happy explained that taxation was voluntary, and you simply did not get to vote on the budget if you didn’t agree to subject yourself to tax, the fellow stopped asking any more questions. Happy got the impression the man might have thought he was making it all up.

But when another fellow asked to join him at the second dinner in the common mess, and asked similar questions he didn’t think it was a coincidence. Somebody wanted to understand his politics. The fact he didn’t really have much of any they would recognize as such was a real impedance.

The trouble with telling people the truth, when your truth is incomprehensible to them, is that they will think it a lie. That wouldn’t matter if it was just your taste in music or how much money you make. But in something with sides in conflict like politics, their imagination will work overtime until they invent their own lie to fill the void. At best they will think you deceptive and at worst they will tag you as an enemy.

Both of his interrogators were nominal citizens of different Earth nations, but previous Mars residents headed back home. The conclusion Happy came to was he better make a report to the kids. This was the kind of long range thing they needed to be aware of. He had a supply of one time pads and composed a message. It went to Jeff, but he knew that a message to one was to all three of them.

I’m being quizzed excessively.” Happy reported. “There appears to be an undercurrent of Martian politics beneath the veneer of polite neutrality from Earth politics. Martian politics that we had no idea existed. Home politics seem to puzzle them, so I have not really been recruited, just probed. I’m not sure if the fellows questioning me are even on the same team or opposites. But their questions were all framed by comparing Home to Mars rather than their Earthly associations.

“There are definitely undercurrents here of which you should be aware. When you get right down to it there is no other issue to pursue between them and Earth than the same one we had, independence. With us there were economic issues around the Rock, but Mars is a money sink. They have no production and are actively avoiding tourism, so any division with Earth has to be over philosophical issues. I not sure what those may be, and I refuse to reverse pump them reveal what they may be at this point.

One fellow did speak strongly about the superior quality of the colonists, so I suspect they may have a desire to isolate themselves. They have a long way to go, much further than the moon for example, before they could be self sustaining. They may ignore economics, but economics won’t ignore them. However people can be completely impractical and pursue philosophies that ignore reality. I’m sure you can find many historic examples. I’ll send more information when I am certain about it. But sending excessive encrypted messages they can’t crack may worry them too. I don’t want to look like a spy. If I want to just send normal chatty notes they’ll be in the clear. Love you all.” - Happy

“That’s interesting,” April said. “I have no idea how Martian recruits are selected. Happy didn’t say much about that. He’s so deeply qualified I didn’t question him getting in. But maybe they have a clique in place that is favoring the selection of more of their own.”

“There’s only about two hundred of them. It’s a pretty exclusive club any way you figure,” Jeff said. “Happy mentions economics. I’m sure they have many academics, but I wonder if they have anybody with economics training? Why would you send any to Mars? The lack of any might be a gap in their skill sets they don’t even recognize. I’ll try to find out. There must be bios online.”

“My grandpa is pretty good at getting along with people. He’ll do OK,” April decided.

*

“My goodness. Who is that Goddess out there in the dining room?” Karl asked Cook.

“You don’t concern yourself with that me bucko,” the head cook said, and frowned at Karl. “If you get weird with our public I’ll stick you back in the kitchen. Hell, I’ll stick you in the cooler. Are you going to make me regret letting you help at the counter?”

“Not at all. I’ll behave, but tell me you didn’t notice,” Karl challenged him.

“I’m not dead, I noticed. But she’s too young for me and too old for you, and way out of our class at any age. Don’t you go making eyes at her or her friends there will straighten you right out even if I don’t see. She’s a pilot and you’d be noticing her friend if they weren’t sitting beside each other. The guy with them is Heather’s brother, so you’d do well to mind your manners with him too.”

“He’s in a suit liner. A dirty suit liner. You mean to tell me he’s the Sovereign’s brother and he works a regular grunt job?”

“I’m telling you, there isn’t a regular grunt job on this rock. Everything matters from how Heather decides to deal with Armstrong down to how you scrub out the stock pot. You still have some attitude, some Earth Think, and if you ever want to get past pot scrubbing and be my boss you better lose it.”

“Be your boss? Don’t you want to move on up and I’ll never get past you?” Karl asked.

“I’ve been offered management,” Cook said. “Turned it down. Sitting in front of a screen all day isn’t my thing. I like cooking and working with my hands. Managing you useless loafers as is much management as I ever care to suffer. If I moved up who exactly would you pick, to inflict their cooking on these poor people?”

“Would you talk to me like that if you really ever thought I’d be your boss?” Karl asked.

“If you ever grow up enough to be my boss you’ll look back and be embarrassed how true it was. Now hustle your butt back and get some plates before the last are gone.” He just shook his head, disgusted Karl couldn’t keep a stack of plates stocked.

Karl looked at the end of the line. There were only three plates, and he’d have sworn he just brought out a new stack. He was supposed to be watching that, where did they go? How did Cook keep everything that was happening in his head, time it all, and catch him out too? He hurried to the back.

*

“Do you want to come along and sit second seat while I take some measurements with this gravity modulator?” Jeff asked that evening.

“Yeah, I haven’t had any flight time in months. Is this orbit to orbit? I have to get some lander time too or they’ll be making me recertify,” April complained.

“We can do both. We can leave here and declare we are doing a lunar insertion. If we announced we were headed to uncontrolled translunar space in a manned vessel everybody and their dog would know we were up to something. Once we’re in lunar orbit we can tell Central control we are raising orbit to test some drive gear, without any time parameters. Home local and anybody snooping on traffic here will be out of the loop.

“It has the benefit of being totally true, and Earth Control doesn’t care what we are doing if it’s not in past L1. We can go make our test run and come back as they are expecting, land to get you some annual time in the first seat for landing, and visit Heather. You know she’ll be delighted. We don’t see her near enough.”

“Tomorrow? Let’s call and make sure she isn’t holding some big pow-wow or something and can spend some time with us,” April said.

“Yes, tomorrow, early. That’s when I told them I wanted the Chariot prepped. But we won’t get back and landed at Central until later in the day. The Chariot doesn’t have a run scheduled for three days so we have some leeway when we come back. As far as everybody is concerned we’re doing a freight run to make it cheap to visit Heather on the company’s bit. That will cover us loading and unloading the modulator. Not even Chen knows what we are really doing. You call Heather. I called her for our last visit, I don’t want it to always be me.”

*

“Roger Dionysus’ Chariot. You are clear to burn as filed on your mark. Call Central Control before your orbital burn please Miss Lewis. Be safe out there.”

April acknowledged the pleasantry with assurances they would be safe. They did a long easy quarter G burn. The moon was off their left out the port, and it would take a while for it to grow at their moderate velocity, as they aimed at where it was going to be.

“I had Dave make a few changes to the Chariot,” Jeff said. “I’m not sure if he understood the technical ramifications or not. I want to use a gravitational variable when we finally do make a quantum transition, but it will be easier to do a hybrid solution than one or the other. We now have slight change to the drive chamber to create a positive ion cloud behind us. We have to run out a point now to safely equalize charges when we come back to dock. That was something we never wanted to do on purpose before, but will benefit us eventually. The landing pads can conduct it without any changes.”

“Won’t the regular crew wonder what it’s for when they see it?” April asked.

“It’s all software activated. The system will never show on their screens without the correct key at startup to activate it.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to change one variable at a time?” April asked.

“If you want to make extra test flights,” Jeff said. “We have instrumentation for both, and they don’t interfere with each other. We read the gravity pulse when we activate it and read the full charge number when we ground the ship again.”

April ‘flew’ the Chariot, which meant she didn’t allow herself to become engrossed or distracted with other things. She watched the readouts, looked occasionally at the radar and even looked out the ports now and then, for all the slight possibility that would tell her anything meaningful. The only thing that might matter was if the moon didn’t continue to grow and slide in front of them as expected. But if they got a radio call or a system went wonky she wouldn’t lose precious seconds reading instruments and switching back mentally to piloting.

Jeff on the other hand pulled up work on his screen and used the time. He wasn’t talking to anyone, but he had that air of concentration that said was involved in something.

“When you get close to your burn, you might as well tell Central Control we will only be doing a partial orbit and lifting from their control space on the backside,” Jeff said. “So they aren’t alarmed when we don’t come back around.”

They were close enough so April went ahead and did that, Jeff staying silent since it was April’s hours they needed credited. Central acknowledged as polite as can be and tacked on the end, Armstrong advised, since they still insisted on a separate traffic authority. Then Armstrong came on the frequency and said, Armstrong copied. It was kind of silly but it made everybody happy.

The burn didn’t slow them into a circular orbit, rather they were aimed at the moon and would have crashed into it at a shallow angle if they hadn’t done anything. The burn sped them up and lifted them as they went around to the back side and sent them into uncontrolled space behind the moon from the Earth. The loss of mass as they rose in the lunar gravity improved their performance slightly.

“Where are we aiming?” April asked. “I didn’t run your numbers to see.”

“Just, out there,” Jeff said waving a hand at the stars. “We’re not going to make a transition so why aim at anything?”

“It seems like you should make everything as realistic as possible. You might get different readings if you aren’t aimed at a star,” April objected.

“I don’t know why it would, but it’s been about a month since Weir’s drone flew. Centauri still has to be pretty much ahead of us somewhere. I can’t see the star field that well with the interior lights up. Punch it in the computer and aim at it if you like. We’re only using about a quarter of our delta V. That’s not going to alter it significantly.”

“OK, comp actually will end the burn a little early,” April said in a moment. The Chariot pivoted a little, they barely felt it, and then cut off the burn about two minutes later.

“Permission to deploy test equipment?” Jeff asked, careful of her command.

“Do your thing,” April said very casually.

The hold opened and the gravitational modulator was released from the grapple installed on the deck of their hold. On camera they watched four small drones slowly move it from the hold to the nose of their craft and nudged it back until its pin could be grasped by the grapple on their nose. The power connections mounted on each side were lined up and forced together by the same motion.

“And we have power and data,” Jeff informed her. “Deploying drones now.”

The four drones that eased the module into position detached and flew off perpendicular to their course as they coasted along.

Two stopped five hundred meters away on each side. The other two continued until they were a full kilometer away opposite each other, and braked to a stop.

“OK, I’m going to pulse the thing and we’ll get some readings and pull the drones in,” Jeff said.

“Will we feel anything?” April asked.

“I’d be really surprised if we do,” Jeff said. “No more than you do behind a gravitational lance when you shoot it. But I’ll count it down and you tell me if you notice any sensation.”

“Setting a five second delay. It will active from now,” he said, pushing the button.

“Four, three, two, one, mark! Well crap, I’ve lost telemetry on my drones. Pinging them… “

“Jeff?” April looked over and he was looking down at his screen frowning.

“Jeff?” she said with a little more urgency. He looked up, curious, and April pointed out the port.

“Where the hell did that come from?” he asked. There was a star straight ahead and the really significant fact was not only how bright it was but that it showed a disc.

“I’m pretty sure we did the coming and it has just been sitting right here,” April said. “A couple of the brighter stars… shifted when it appeared.”

Jeff didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “It wasn’t supposed to do that,” he objected.

“I’m really, really irritated with you,” April admitted.

“So am I. Here we are in a different star system and I didn’t bring any decent instrumentation. I don’t have anything to look for planets, not even the one we know is here. I’m never going to find those drones again! The readings are lost and it’s going to be a major pain in the butt getting the drive back in the hold without them.”

“Jeff!!!”

He looked at her surprised.

“Can we go back?”

“Well sure. If it worked one way it’ll work the other.”

April let out a deep sigh of relief.

“We’re in one piece and if we hadn’t retained our motion as an object I’m sure we wouldn’t be. No way to check it because nothing is in range of our radar, but I’m certain we are headed in system. We’d be a cloud of loose particles otherwise. So we need to get flipped over and kill our motion. Build up velocity again and jump back.”

“Oh, so it’s jump, now?” April asked.

Jeff opened his mouth, regarded the expression on April’s face, and shut it before answering hastily.

“Sweetie, it’s anything you want to call it forevermore.”

For once he said the right thing.

“The navigational computer is going to complain some of the stars don’t match position, but four or five light years is a gnat’s whisker. Most of them won’t have shifted position significantly at all. We’ll tell it to accept a majority match and get pointed right.” He typed away on the keyboard, not trusting voice for such a critical task.

The ship rotated gently and when it came to a stop there was a bright yellow star dead ahead.

“Wow,” April said.

“Yeah, first people to see it like this,” Jeff acknowledged. “Tuck your arms in, the drive is more efficient at 3 Gs, and I want as much fuel as I can retain when we go back.”

“We should have near half, shouldn’t we?” April asked.

“Yeah, but I have no idea how close to our previous track we’ll reenter the solar system going back. We shouldn’t even be here. If we come out half way to Mars it’s going to be a problem. You didn’t pack a picnic lunch by any chance?”

“We have ration bars in the survival kit in back, for if there was a bad Earth landing,” April remembered. “Water and air is no problem. If we can get close enough to somebody to talk to them on the radio in a month, month and a half maybe, we’re fine.”

“Arms in and safe now!” Jeff said. “Boost in twenty seconds from… mark!”

Three G isn’t bad. They didn’t waste power on spinning the compensators up, but neither was it comfortable to chat. Jeff didn’t try to jump out under boost. He cut the drive when they should have sufficient velocity and coasted again to exactly duplicate the previous event.

Jeff called off the time to jump as calmly as if he’d done it a hundred times. When it jumped this time he was looking forward and saw the sun appear. Also the moon, a little smaller than it should be and on the wrong side, but certainly within range to return without even getting any hard numbers.

“I can get a radar return at this range,” he said relieved. “Near a seven second lag,” he added when he got the return. “Coming in a little hot and retrograde, but we will have plenty of margin to orbit and land. A couple hours late, but we don’t have to divert to go back to Home.”

The ship turned and burned at an angle to their target.

Chapter 14

“The plot is on your screen,” Jeff said. “You’ll need to talk to Central Control through the satellite net, since we’re on the back side, and inform them of your plan for orbital insertion. Don’t commit to a landing plan yet. I’m going to have to suit up and get the drive module back in the hold. It may take more than one orbit to do. I’m not that good at zero G work and I want to take it slow and safe. Would you call Heather and let her know we’ll be a little late, and we’ll explain it all when we see her?”

April just looked at him.

“You do have to approach in command or some stickler will check the logs and say we switched the conn and you can’t claim the hours.”

“How can you be thinking of that?” April demanded. “We just did an interstellar flight. It’s historic. Who cares who has the conn and how the hours will be logged?”

“You’ll care next year if you have to recertify, and I hadn’t decided about making any big announcement. Why don’t we just go talk to Heather and see what we want to do?”

“You want to keep it secret?” April asked.

“At least for right now, yes. Let’s talk about it. All three of us. If we want to do it publicly we can do it again properly equipped, so we… ” he grimaced, and changed his statement. “So I don’t look like a flaming idiot.”

“You may be throwing away your place in history,” April warned him. “Like Neil Armstrong going back up the ladder and sending the other guy down.”

Jeff laughed. “The other guy. See how thin the margin of fame is? Anyway it’s your fame, I was just the payload tech running the experiment and you still had the conn when we jumped.”

April screwed up her face. “Buzz something. I can’t remember his real name. James Weir may very well do it soon, and he’ll be the ones in the history books.”

“And once he does there’s a couple billion Earthies down there who are going to want to do it too. I’m not sure how many will make it, but a whole lot more than all of us on Home I think. I’d be happy to let him have all the fame, and give me the stars. Why not get a little head start on the mob and get out there and grab some of it for ourselves? Everybody will start close and cautious. We can be bold, go out further and own it. One hopes there is some decent real estate. Shucks, it’s so big out there it will take them a long time to even find us and know we’re out there.”

April was open mouthed at the audacity of it.

“We’re coming in the wrong way too fast. I’m pretty sure there isn’t any possible rational maneuver to explain that. What will I say when they notice?” April asked.

“Brass it out. Say you’ve been testing advanced drive systems if they won’t drop it. Tell them it’s proprietary information and you don’t intend to explain. God only knows that’s the truth,” Jeff said.

Central Control was silent for several long unbelieving seconds when April uploaded her numbers and stated her intended orbit. Then the fellow just slowly and carefully repeated the impossible numbers back to her.

“Confirmed, Central Control. We need to do an EV and shall file for landing after an indeterminate number of orbits,” April warned him. “Permission to burn on my mark?”

“Burn as filed,” Central agreed. “Armstrong copied,” he added. From Armstrong there was silence. They probably didn’t believe it and didn’t want to acknowledge it.

Jeff was slow. It took three orbits, and April maneuvering the Chariot so the drive module was hanging in front of the open hold hatch before Jeff could rig a cable on the grapple pin and reel it in dead slow. She had to activate the grapple in the hold on Jeff’s command over the radio. There wasn’t a remote or controls in the hold. They hadn’t planned on needing to operate it from there. She didn’t like doing that with Jeff in the hold, but there was no way around it.

They clamped the grapple right over the cable and crushed it rather than have that much mass loose even for a few seconds. It was about four times Jeff’s mass. Just enough to be really dangerous. People treated huge objects with respect. Smaller things were where they got careless and got hurt. What if it drifted back out a few centimeters and the grapple failed to grasp around the pin cleanly? Once activated the claw could pop it out with tremendous force like a pinched seed if it wasn’t inserted deeply enough.

When Jeff came back into pressure he didn’t unsuit. He was exhausted. Extra-Vehicular work used different muscles that protested being called to unexpected service. He strapped down still in his pressure suit and took his helmet off. There was a rack right there for it and he clamped it down. April noticed his hair was matted wet from sweat and could hear his suit fans were still running to deal with it.

Jeff leaned back and closed his eyes. “I don’t ever want to do that again,” Jeff assured her. “We’ll make changes so nobody ever has to manhandle it like that again.”

“If it isn’t secret we can just build it right on the nose and leave it there, can’t we?” April asked.

“Yes, but we’re not there yet. I didn’t want it perched out there on the Chariot’s nose for a couple days. Somebody would notice and start asking questions. Somebody not totally stupid might hear we had an unusual return approach and put that together with the strange extension on our nose to start asking too many questions. It was worth doing, honest.”

He rolled his head over and looked at her. “Go ahead and put us down at Central. I’ll be fine by the time we arrive. I’m tired but it’s only lunar gravity, and I’d much rather a real shower and a night in a decent bed than sleeping a few orbits in this stinky damp suit.”

He closed his eyes and stayed silent while April dealt with Central Control. Even Armstrong acknowledged their tacked on landing clearance like they hadn’t had a snit before. April thought Jeff might be sleeping despite what he said, but after the burn started she looked and his eyes were open.

When they settled on the landing jacks April asked Jeff. “Did you get your discharge readings?”

He looked sheepish. “I forgot to turn it on.”

*

It was deep in the third shift when Jeff got his shower and fell into bed. Heather had stayed up to greet them, concerned, so she was tired too. Jeff got her guest room so he could sleep as long as he needed. Even that small guest room was a luxury for the Sovereign of Central, one she rarely used, but it was a palace level perk by lunar standards. The furniture more so than just the cubic, which they had in abundance. Mo insisted it be furnish at an appropriate level for her station. That amused her.

April listened as Heather called Dakota on her pad, informed her that she was just getting to bed, to cancel any appointments for the entire day, and not call her unless it involved war or insurrection.

Heather listened to something April only heard as a murmur. “You are my Hand,” Heather said. “If anybody demands an immediate ruling they will accept your judgment or get none. You have the power of life and death and may bind the nation in my name. You’re one of the most sensible people I’ve ever known and I will sleep easy knowing you won’t do something thoughtless.”

Heather smiled and thumbed the pad off. “I should have done that ages ago. I’ve missed you two so much when you’re both just a couple hours away. But I got like so many people do, who think they are indispensable, and proceeded to make myself miserable.”

“My goodness. How did she respond to that speech?” April asked.

“Aww, shucks,” Heather quoted.

April couldn’t help it. The stress of the flight. The shock of the unexpected jump. The relief flooding her gut at seeing the moon again. The absurd humor that was just so Dakota… She started crying and laughing at the same time. Just totally broke down in the flood of emotion and let Heather hold her until it ran out.

“It must look stupid,” April said finally. “I haven’t even told you what happened yet.”

“A lot obviously. Tell me tomorrow. Come on to bed. You’ll have to share, I’m not about to send you off to the singles barracks. It’s been awhile. Remember when you slept over at my mother’s house about a hundred years ago?”

“It feels that long ago, doesn’t it? I was prudish and a little embarrassed to go shower, and then shocked when your mom had a male friend over who just came out to breakfast with us unconcerned.”

“And you conned him out of his cuff-links. But I’ve changed a little bit too. Come on, I’m tired, and no you don’t stink,” she said seeing the objection coming, “and if you did I’m as bad as you. The housekeeper will change the sheets so it doesn’t matter. But you get the outside this time so you can sneak off to shower if you wake first.”

“OK,” April agreed. Too tired to argue.

*

Heather stirred behind April and woke her up. “What’s that odor?” April asked. She had a keen nose, never ruined by polluted Earth air. “It’s sort of nutty. Some kind of food, but I can’t place it.”

“Ah! Oatmeal. I forgot to tell Amy not to come in. She just automatically makes my oatmeal.”

“That’s fine, It smells better than the oatmeal I make. I’m starved for anything,” April declared.

“She just makes a single serving. I’ll go tell her to make a real breakfast. Jeff would be polite but oatmeal would just be an appetizer for him. I’ll go before I shower and tell her to make eggs and pancakes and whatever meat we have in the freezer. Or get some from the cafeteria.”

Heather trotted off barefoot on the cool floor wearing the long t-shirt she slept in. When she came back she invited April to shower first, but she declined.

“She informed me she ate the oatmeal when I didn’t get up. That’s fine, we’ll have a real breakfast in a half hour or so,” Heather promised.

April dressed better than Heather expected, a black tunic with a bold pattern woven in the cloth and tights. Heather kept her plainer outfit on. It would seem like she was trying to compete to change now.

Amy had an impressive pile of pancakes made and scrambled eggs and sausage on platters. Jeff joined them with his hair still wet. Jeff looked like he was busting to talk but looked at Amy uncertain and just thanked her for the cooking and issued general good morning greetings to April and Heather that didn’t sound like him at all. He looked at Heather, alert, but when she didn’t tell him to speak up he turned his attention to the food and waited to speak freely.

“You can have the rest of the day off,” Heather informed Amy. “We’ll see to our own supper. We may just go to the cafeteria. It’s good to be seen there so people don’t imagine I’m sitting at home dining on lobster and sweet corn fresh off the shuttle.”

“I’d have no objection to that, if you’re sharing with us,” Jeff said.

“If you were king the peasants would soon start building guillotines,” Amy informed him.

Jeff looked shocked, unaware of Amy’s blunt ways. One hand crept up and felt his neck.

“People expect the sovereign to have certain privileges,” Heather told him. “However Amy is right. If you make a show of lavish living it builds resentment. Are you familiar with Marie Antoinette?”

“Uh… lead singer for the Pico Pirates?” Jeff guessed.

“Look her up,” Heather insisted with a disgusted look, and let it drop.

“You have batter in the fridge if that isn’t enough pancakes,” Amy said. “Shall I plan on three for breakfast tomorrow?”

“I’ll message you on com,” Heather said. “I’ve a new policy. I’m taking more personal time, sanity time, and delegating more. I may even take a few days to go back to Home with my friends.”

“Good!” Amy said, warmly approving. “I’ll check. When you take a break, I get a break. It’s good for everybody.”

After they heard her go out, Jeff looked up at the kitchen screen and frowned. “Why the odd sticky note in the corner, that looks like a safety notice?”

Heather turned and looked. It said: “Days without oatmeal. One!”

*

Jeff speared a couple more sausages and looked around at the walls suspiciously. “Can we speak freely now?” he asked.

“It’s safe,” Heather assured him. “I have it checked every day, and both those hunter bots you sent me are active. We haven’t had an incursion in weeks. But you can’t talk and eat. Not to tell me a big story, and I got the impression you had an adventure. Enjoy the food while it’s hot.”

Jeff ate but he looked around even harder.

“The one has a habit of lurking behind the big spider plant hanging in the great room, the other can turn up anywhere. He will go down to floor level and the other never does now. I know you programmed them to learn, but it’s like they have different personalities now,” Heather said.

“They only have two petabyte. I don’t think you can write a personality in that,” Jeff objected.

“Maybe it’s in my mind,” Heather admitted. “I could be anthropomorphizing them.” But I swear the one who hides behind the spider plant has more personality than one of our rover drivers.”

Jeff shoveled in more breakfast for awhile, looking thoughtful.

“I could probably write a pretty good rover driver in two petabyte,” he decided.

“I’m stuffed,” April announced. “Do you want me to tell her?” she asked Jeff, who was still eating.

“I’m not quite ready to hear a big complicated story,” Heather admitted. “After a while.”

Jeff looked surprised, and had the wisdom to keep his mouth shut for a change. April was the one who asked, “What would you like to do?”

“Go back to bed.”

“I think I’m full… enough,” Jeff announced, and made a show of pushing his plate away.

*

The lunch rush was over and Karl was sure for the first time in a couple hours nothing was about to run out. There were clean plates, plenty of silverware, the napkin holders were full. The floor in front of the counter was dry and the cleaning bot had been turned loose to make a couple passes when there was no line. The condiments and coffee concentrate were topped off. Cook hadn’t yelled at him once today. That was two days in a row.

Karl looked up and Heather was coming in the cafeteria with a couple he didn’t know. He turned slowly, making no sudden motion to call attention to himself, and walked in the back. He stopped just out of sight and peeked out of the service entry carefully.

A big hand landed on his shoulder.

“I didn’t release you for lunch, but it is pretty slow… “

Cook looked at his face funny.

“You look scared to death, boy. What’s wrong?” Karl was breathing kind of fast and gripping the prep table.

“Heather just came in and I didn’t want her to see me,” Karl admitted.

“She’s the one who sent you here,” Cook said, reasonably. “She knows you’re here. She does come in pretty regularly. You just didn’t see her working in the back, but you’re going to see her out front. Central is pretty small. No matter what you do you’re going to run into her now and then unless you get a weird off shift job outside pressure or something.”

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t want her to see me. Everything is going pretty good,” Karl said. “Why remind her I even exist?”

“I don’t think she’s as fearsome as you have built up in your mind, but I can tell you’re really upset. Go on in the back and get some lunch. Get yourself calmed down, no reason to panic. Take some extra lunch time and they’ll be gone soon enough,” Cook said and gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder.

Karl nodded thanks, and took a few steps towards the back, but turned around.

“Cook, it’s not her. I hate to have her see me because I’m starting to understand how badly I screwed up. That’s all she’s going to remember so soon. Maybe if I don’t screw up again for awhile, for a long time, she won’t think I’m still a dumb ass.”

“Well… one can always hope,” Cook agreed. “Go on with you,” he said, shooing him off to lunch.

*

“My salad is really good,” April said, “better than we get at Home.”

“Salad stuff has to be dead fresh or it suffers. We try to get it to you within two days, but it’s hard. We have other high value freight that bumps greens and mushrooms off until the next shuttle, and some things like zukes and carrots are standby already.

April frowned and rolled it over with her fork.

“I think it has some stuff in it we don’t get.”

Heather leaned over and really looked at it.

“The one frilly green there, actually it’s kind of red, that’s a lettuce that we don’t have enough yet for export. The other little pieces with the very plump leaves are purslane. It’s considered a weed in North America, but growing like a weed is a plus. It grows nice and flat. It has enough of a peppery flavor you might notice it. The only trouble with it is you need to strip the leaves off the older stems by hand. Call it experimental. Anything that needs much hand processing is iffy. We may give up on it as a cash crop.”

“Rabbit food,” Jeff teased, but the truth was he’d piled enough lettuce, cucumber, tomato and onion on his sandwich, to make it a salad in all but name.

“I remember when you didn’t have a decent shower here, but eventually Central is going to be more comfortable than Home. You have the room to do things we can’t,” April said.

“Home will have luxuries,” Heather said, “but it will be like living in Tokyo, you’ll pay through the nose for them. I’m going to come see you guys more often. I was being a little irrational about it.”

“I was actually thinking we need to come see you more often,” April said.

“I see the value of both ideas,” Jeff said. For once he could agree with everybody.

“Yes, and I know what lens you are peering through,” Heather accused. She made a little circle with her thumb and finger and made a swirling motion before her eye, and then winked at Jeff through it.

Jeff smiled and started to say something, probably witty from his grin, them went wide eyed with wonder, his mouth in a silent ‘o’. He grabbed his pad and started to open it then stopped.

“I need to get back to your apartment where I can use the hard wired access to search with some real security, not here,” Jeff said, looking paranoid again.

“This is about… the story April told me?” Heather asked. Then she was irritated with herself. Paranoia was catching. Nobody was going to snoop on her in the cafeteria. Nevertheless she got dessert in a take-away container while Jeff stood fidgeting, anxious to go.

Chapter 15

Jeff sat at Heather’s com console and plugged his pad in. The women sat close but didn’t press him or look over his shoulder. They made coffee, better than the cafeteria’s, and ate their dessert. Jeff let his sit, focused on his idea.

It was an unusually long time before Jeff shut the screen down. He finally turned to them.

“I remembered the key words and general locations of the documents I wanted, but the extra time involved was setting up their retrieval through other parties and Earth accounts, so they aren’t traced back to my accounts on Home. Chen will have some of his European agents buy them and forward them through third parties. Some of the papers are behind pay walls, and I don’t want anyone watching me closely to see a sudden interest in these old papers. Especially since they probably haven’t had that many copies retrieved for years.”

“You haven’t told us why you suddenly needed to do this,” Heather reminded him.

“I’m sorry, I thought the only important thing happening was obvious. It has to do with the parameters of the quantum transition, jump that is,” he corrected quickly for April.

“By James Weir’s numbers we should not have been able to tunnel through to Alpha Centauri. If you simply substitute gravitation for the electric field. Even with a small boost from the drive setting up a charge, it’s not near enough. It kept bugging me and working at the back of my mind. Then when Heather gestured like looking through a lens and moved it in a circle I remembered.

“Back closer to the turn of the century there was a theory put forth to explain anomalies observed between the observed amount of matter and known properties of our universe. It was suggested gravity isn’t a perfect inverse square force to infinity, but rather acts stronger at long distances than predicted. There was even some observational data that was put forward to support it. Gravitational lensing,” Jeff made the same motion with a closed finger and thumb in front of his eye Heather had, “around distant galaxies.”

“So what happened to the theory?” April asked.

“First of all nobody liked it. It would have required huge changes in theory and nobody had new changes handy to plug in. Rejecting the accepted model is hard enough to get people to consider when you have an alternative to suggest. Getting them to accept they have no idea at all how to describe reality and then ask them to wait around for something new to be advanced is wildly unpopular.

“It would have rendered all the accepted models as quaint historical steps along the way to a newer modern model, including the work of a lot of living people. Their status and financial security could even be threatened. Immediately, a lot of the theories about the distances to far galaxies and objects beyond started being questioned.”

“So they came up with a better theory?” Heather asked.

“Not really. We still don’t have a theory that doesn’t have some sort of excess matter in the universe. And we’ve never been able to directly test the forces over longer distances. Even checking from here to Jupiter is like checking across a couple centimeters and then applying it to galactic scales.”

“But we just checked in on a much bigger scale, right? April asked.

“Well, not a galactic scale yet, but big enough to show there is some difference from what is expected on the scale of just a few light-years. We now see what happens when we have very large distinct masses a few light years apart, with no competing targets for any reasonable distance behind them, and no significant targets that aren’t some large angular deviation from the line of motion. We still have no idea how it works for tens or hundreds of light years.

“The worst that might have happened with the Centauri system is we might have ended up near Proxima, but we’d have still known where we were, and easily turned around. Sol and Earth were an easy target because the sun was still in line behind them, there are no large competing masses like a binary system has, and nothing close behind. Jupiter might alter your entry if you come in on just the right angle close to it, but that’s about it.

“I wouldn’t want to see what would happen if you aimed at a distant group of stars all presenting within a very small angle and all of similar mass. You’d have little chance of predicting which one you’d tunnel to and at what distance. When you turned around and looked for Sol, you’d have a similar problem. You might be able to get back in the same neighborhood by successively smaller jumps if you could find Sol by spectroscopy after your first return jump.”

“You’re welcome,” April said.

“I beg your pardon?” Jeff didn’t get the non sequitur.

“You’re welcome. You wanted to just activate and jump on an almost random heading out there,” April said, making a vague waving motion. “I urged you to pick a specific target.”

“Indeed you saved us a world of trouble,” Jeff agreed. “I hadn’t planned on… ” He seemed lost for words. “Such a sudden departure.” April just glared at him for choosing such a mild, self-serving euphemism for a colossal screw up.

Heather looked horrified. She hadn’t heard that detail before.

“How will we gauge risk?” Heather asked. “What are the chances a ship will jump and not end up where they were aiming?”

“That’s a really good question,” Jeff admitted. “This is why I wanted to see the old papers, to see if any of their math will give me a start on just answering that question. But when you come right down to it, we will have to send ships to other stars, at different distances, and with various separation from their neighbors, and see what happens. The jump system Weir made will need to be put through the same process. We’ll have to build up a database of experience.”

“Not with me flying it you’re not,” April said. “I have no desire to be one of those outliers that teach you something by disappearing.”

Heather just nodded her agreement with that.

“This idea about keeping the tech as a trade secret needs a lot more discussion too,” Heather demanded. “Prolonged discussion. I’m going to take a few days and come back to Home with you so we can talk face to face about it. Also, I’m seeing I need time off now and then, and right now there’s still some pent up… demand.

“I’d love to have you,” April said with no hesitation. “As long as you’re sure they won’t pull a coup if you are gone a few days.”

“More likely Dakota will call begging me to come back by the second day. You know, I didn’t ask for this job,” Heather reminded her. “It was thrust upon me in an emergency. All I really wanted to do was sell some lots and make money.”

*

Jeff enclosed his gravitational module in a its custom freight container, including the grapple he unbolted from the deck. The strong container was closed and well locked, before he allowed the Chariot’s hold to be opened. They handed it over to the dock workers at the north hub to forward to their new cubic. Well, newly owned cubic. Escorting it themselves or even worse, bring in armed security, would call entirely too much attention to it.

The dock worker read the mass written in the document window and gave a gentle push against it to confirm that it felt right.

“Any special instructions or cautions?” the man asked, a little nosy.

“No, nothing delicate,” Jeff assured him. “It’s just our holding oven. We’ve been out making pizza deliveries.” That was a gentle rebuke. If it needed hazard stickers Jeff would have applied them. The man gave a forced smile as if that was witty.

“You can leave it in the airlock. The outer door will open once to 578319,” Jeff told him. I just set it from my pad.”

“Got it,” the fellow agreed. He considered the crate. “You sure it will clear the hatch?”

“With two centimeters to spare,” Jeff assured him. “It was custom built to fit.” Indeed the module had that as a design restraint too, because he didn’t want to have to loosen an exterior bulkhead to get it in and out. There was only a coffin lock in the outside bulkhead.

The fellow nodded satisfied. That question was reasonable, smart even.

It felt like old times sailing down the zero G corridors of North hub together. They weren’t going to their recently bought cubic however, they were headed to April’s place.

“I have enough in the fridge for lunch later,” April said. “No need to go out until later.”

That made Heather smile. She wanted time with them, not a public appearance.

“If we have to go out for supper let’s make it somewhere fun,” she requested. “Your club or the Quiet Retreat. Can you really count on anything being in the fridge? You made clear Gunny doesn’t let anything sit around and have a chance to go bad.”

“He’s off on ISSII, and somewhere beyond that he neglected to tell me,” April said. “If he’d gotten back he’d have dropped a note to my pad.”

“And you haven’t had anybody report where he went from ISSII?” Jeff asked.

“If I had it wouldn’t be polite to say,” April insisted. “I’ll call and see if the Fox and Hare are booked up. If they are we’ll go to straight to the Quiet Retreat. I like to keep aware what sort of things the competition is offering from time to time anyway.”

They made it to April’s hatch and entered. It was a full certified Mitsubishi airlock, she liked that because it meant there was no annual inspection snooping around her cubic, or rather there was an annual, but not as intrusive as checking a pressure sensing curtain lock. It required they close the outer door before they opened the inner. It was very difficult to override and get both open at once. Safety outweighed convenience. Out of ingrained habit April confirmed the pressure was up before she opened the inner.

The lights came up automatically, and Heather went to look at April’s new drawing and Jeff hurried off on a course they assumed was for the bathroom. Before Heather could really look at Lindsey’s new work, or they could discuss it, the door alarm buzzed.

“House, show corridor on big screen,” April ordered.

Not only were they not expecting anyone, they would have never guessed their visitors would be the Head of Security, Jon Davis, Gabriel, and a third officer April didn’t know by name. It wouldn’t have been so disquieting, but they were in full armor and armed. Not a hard suit, but as much as you could wear in pressure including full ballistic faceplates tilted back to show their faces.

April was shocked to see Gabriel kitted out this way. She knew he’d been hired for security work, but somehow she assumed he’d be in intelligence and analysis. She’d never pictured him able to do the rough stuff, because he was so gentle and mannerly.

“May we speak with you?” Jon asked when the external screen activated on the corridor. He had a wonderful theatrical voice, but today he spoke a little faster and clipped, suggesting an unusual urgency.

April hesitated in shock, so Heather managed to beat her to it.

“You are talking with us. Do you seek someone here?” she demanded. “Do you have a complaint or mandate from the Assembly?” Her expression wasn’t friendly at all.

Such a thing never occurred to April. She regarded Jon like a favorite uncle, but it wasn’t lost on April that Heather hooked a thumb behind the grip of her laser. That wasn’t simply an empty gesture. The armor they wore was much more effective against ballistic weapons than the expensive energy weapon. Forcing their way through the lock, unable to avoid that weapon’s beam, would be a deadly choke point if they intended to breech the lock.

“Not at all,” Jon said showing his palms to Heather even thought the gesture lost some of its innocence with black gauntlets and the ballistic flap secured back off the fingers.

Gabriel looked over his shoulder, worried. What could he possibly be concerned with coming behind them, given the way they were equipped?

“We’ve intercepted com from some foreign visitors,” Jon explained. “They intend to lure James Weir to your apartment. They may think it’s still empty and a perfect place to ambush him. We were aware you are back and actually want to guard you, not arrest anyone. Would you please let us get out of the corridor?”

“Sure, come on in Jon,” April decided. Heather didn’t look as sure.

Jon was definitely in a different mental state than his usual laid-back self. He looked both ways coming through the inner hatch like it might be an ambush. He nodded at the nearby couches facing each other over a low table, and pointed.

“Can I set up there?”

April gave him permission with a wave.

“You can always go in a full lock, not a curtain lock, as a safety feature,” April reminded him. “It’s in the building code. You just can’t go through without the correct code.”

“I know. We intended to set up in your lock to wait for these guys, but it might have seemed unfriendly to enter after we were aware you beat us back here,” Jon said. “Heather already felt that way with us still out in the corridor.”

Jon took off his helmet with its visor and internal display, and put on his usual spex. He put his pad on the table, pointed at the big screen still showing the now empty corridor outside and lifted an inquiring eyebrow.

“House, link main screen to guest. No restrictions to outside access,” April ordered.

Jon switched the feed from the corridor just outside to the elevators further away.

The other two considered the layout of the room and acted without orders from Jon. Gabriel went as far down the bulkhead away from the entry as he could without being in the kitchen and hunkered down with one hand loosely holding his carbine in front of him. The other fellow, unnamed but with a tag on his chest that said ‘Schmidt’, took the other end of the couch from Jon facing directly at the entry hatch.

None was in the others’ fields of fire, and the fellow by Jon could fire into the airlock if it opened. That was to be preferred, and April hoped he was a good shot, because he carefully laid his weapon on the table to avoid scratching it. It was a 30mm grenade launcher with a rotary magazine. One shot in the airlock would clear it of anything, but likely destroy it. April just wondered if he knew how much a brand new Mitsubishi airlock would cost?

Heather finally relaxed seeing the troopers attention totally focused on the lock and externals instead of them.

“You said these people are luring James Weir here? How could they do that? Especially, why would they do that with us gone?” April asked.

“I’m guessing they know you have a full airlock,” Jon said. “Anybody could know that from walking by in the corridor and reading the manufacturer’s plate. I suspect they were going to wait for him in the lock just like we intended, before you showed back up here.”

“But how would they lure him?” Heather asked.

“We had them, but not Weir, under surveillance. They did a number of things since entering that convinced me they were up to no good. From the half of the communication we had it appears they asked him here to meet with Jeff,” Jon said.

“I’ve met Jim.” April told him. “He’d all kinds of things but not stupid, not even a little. If you sent him a text when you talked face to face before he’d know something was wrong. He’d ask for video and refuse to come when it wasn’t forthcoming. He might even be confident enough about Home customs to call you when it didn’t look right.”

“That’s possible,” Jon agreed. “I interviewed James when he first arrived. He was very straight forward. I didn’t bother with these other two characters, but they didn’t text. It appeared they had a very sophisticated AI that could spoof Jeff real time.”

“Son-of-a bitch!” Jeff said from behind them. He’d heard most of it and was understandably upset that his computer generated avatar would be used as bait.

“I hate those sort of constructs,” April said. “But it usually only takes me a few sentences to figure out when self-important, pretentious people use them for an answering machine. If they were as rich and famous as they think they are they’d have actual flesh and blood minions.”

“The sort people buy for a few hundred bucks Australian, yeah.” Jon agreed. “But the sort national intelligence agencies have written specifically to spoof real people? You might be surprised how good they can be.”

“What are you going to do?” Heather asked. “Sucker them into entering the lock? You should have brought sleepy gas if you were going to do that. They may try to shoot their way out and these bulkheads aren’t armored.”

“We’re here for you. I moved fast to get into position, but we have teams around the curve of the corridor both ways. We won’t let them in, and we can lock the outer hatch now that we are inside here. Then my two teams will swoop in from each side and arrest them in overwhelming force. I have a few questions to put to these two. I’m not sure at this point for whom they are working. It could be a government or a corporation.”

“Or a non-governmental agency,” Jeff said, thinking of his dealings with the mafia.

“If it’s going to be a wait I’ll make us all coffee,” April offered.

“Please, that would be nice,” Jon said. “They asked James to be here in about an hour, but we have no idea how far ahead they intended to arrive.”

Chapter 16

“We have movement,” one of Jon’s minions reported well into his second cup of coffee. “They have departed their hotel room with two bulky bags.” He didn’t say anything for another thirty of forty seconds. “They aren’t wearing any sidearms. That makes them conspicuous,” Jon’s man reported. You could hear the amusement in his voice.

“This was planned long ago if they could get hotel reservations,” Jeff told them. “They are booked months ahead even if you will take anything and money is no object.”

“Coming up on the elevator,” he reported. “There were others getting on so they hung back and one acted like he was dealing with something on his pad. They are looking for some privacy I’d say. As soon as the door closes on them I’ll inform you. Are you going to pull your teams in to the elevators when they start up?” the voice inquired.

“Probably,” Jon told him. “Give me your elevator view.” He split April’s screen and showed the elevator down at the full G level. “I should have had them plant a camera in the elevator,” he complained. “I wasn’t sure we had time.”

“They might have seen it,” Jeff said.

“They’re Earthies,” Jon reminded him. “They’d probably expect it.”

On camera the two walked casually across the corridor and in the elevator.

“No, no… go away!” Jon’s man on the lower level said out loud.

Gunny Mac appeared on camera speeding up to catch the elevator and called out to hold it. The two men didn’t make a move to keep the doors from shutting but Gunny reached them in time, pushing his own bag forward to catch the opening at the last minute and force the doors back open. He turned around once inside and gave the two a look that should have dropped them dead to the deck for ignoring his request. Then the doors closed.

“Everybody stay put,” Jon ordered. “We have a civilian in the elevator. Let them enter the corridor up here and maybe they will separate. If it were me doing the operation I’d exit and turn whichever way Gunny didn’t to be rid of him and then double back.”

“Or just walk all the way around the ring,” April said. “Give him time to go in somewhere.”

“Harrison,” Jon said to the team leader past the elevators. “If they turn your way you’ll be in sight too easily. Pull back down the corridor to the maintenance spaces and be prepared to duck inside and let them pass if they come your way.”

“Roger, withdrawing,” Harrison acknowledged.

“What I really don’t want is a hostage situation here,” Jon said.

April looked at him, faintly surprised, then amused. “Did you bring body bags?”

“Of course, but we’ll try not to need them,” Jon said.

“Those two are dead men walking,” April assured him. “They won’t walk away from Gunny or anything so bright. He’s death in both hands and enhanced in both reflexes and strength. They’ll try to assert control, and for sure they’ll do something stupid. It’s what Earthies do.”

*

Inside the elevator the taller of the two men pointed to the elevator buttons and lifted an eyebrow to ask if Gunny wanted him to punch another level.

“That’s good for me,” Gunny said since the half G level light was lit. What he didn’t expect was the exasperated sigh, and both of them stepping as far away from him as possible and drawing pistols on him.

“On the other hand, I’ll take any other level you want to pick for me,” Gunny decided. But no, he saw right away, that train had left the station already.

“Put your hands deep in your pockets and make fists,” the tall one commanded. “Close your eyes, and if you open them before I tell you to I’m going to shoot you.”

Gunny was sure he could take either of them, but not both at the same time, so he complied. There was after all no rush until one of them started shooting. He felt them relieve him of his pistol.

“OK, you can open your eyes.”

The shorter fellow had laid his pistol on the deck in the far corner, and was sliding the magazine in his own pocket. Gunny hadn’t heard him work the action, so there was still one up the snout if he could recover it. The man probably hadn’t wanted to chase the round around the elevator floor if he didn’t catch it. Gunny wasn’t sure what he’d do in the same situation.

“Now, very slowly reach and drop your pants around your ankles.” The tall on said.

Gunny did as he was told.

“I want you to reach to the back of the hand rail there and grasp it, no, not the far back one, the short one on the side, yeah. Now back flat to the wall, stretch you other arm out straight and grab the rail towards the front.”

That left Gunny without an arm cocked to strike and in a position where he had no leverage to launch off the wall. This guy had handled prisoners before, dangerous ones.

“Gerald, go against the back wall and sidle over and cuff him, not on the rail where he can slide it, but on the stand-off spacer at the back, so he can’t reach the controls. Then back off to the other rear corner.”

Gerald frowned at being named, but said nothing. He was definitely the subordinate.

When that was accomplished the leader reached in his pocket without looking and got a card. He stepped closer to the controls and stuck it in the control panel with hardly a glance. He was very familiar with the layout. Where he got a fire and rescue card was another good question. He twisted the knob that would keep the alarm from ringing when he took the car out of service. When it stopped at the half G level he locked the car there and set the doors locked to the call button so the car was out of service to anyone without a card.

“OK, gear up,” he said to his companion and looked over his shoulder at the shorter fellow, Gerald, in the corner. Gerald was already leaning over to open his bag.

The aluminum rail was a bulky flat extrusion to fit your hand and it only had six millimeter bolts holding it off the wall through short stanchions at three places. Gunny ripped it off the wall and swung it as hard as he could. It hit right on the tall fellow’s Adam’s apple crushing it before the man could even look back at Gunny. The end third of the soft bar whipped clear around his neck until it crossed over the long end slightly. With it pulled off the wall, he was free from the rail, just the cuff hanging loose on his wrist.

The other man was only half way erect when Gunny kicked his face with the top of his foot and flipped him backwards so hard his head hit in the corner and he bounced back on his face. Gunny stepped back, opened the doors and removed the elevator card.

The kicked fellow was still squirming on the floor, so Gunny grabbed him around the neck with one hand and the other gathered the seat of his pants in his grip. He took two steps and threw him across the corridor. Where he hit head first it drove a depression in the corridor wall a good hundred millimeters deep. He fell in a pile unmoving. Gunny dragged the fellow in the car out into the corridor, then he came across and went through the other man’s pockets until he found the cuff key and recovered his magazine.

Jon didn’t have time to order anything. When the doors opened one man was laying with a massive piece of metal wrapped around his neck. The other came flying through the door three seconds later and seemed to gain altitude crossing the corridor. It was only a half G.

“Both teams, you can stand down,” Jon ordered. “The situation is… uh… under control.”

“Told you,” April said.

By the time the first team arrived Gunny had already dragged the fellow in the elevator out into the corridor, had his cuff off, his pistol back in its holster and the dead men’s weapons one in each pocket. He had one bag open and was checking the contents out.

Harrison’s team showed up and checked the man in the corridor for signs of life. That was a lost cause. Harrison walked over pulling on surgeon’s gloves and made to pick up the other bag Gunny was ignoring. Jon and his men arrived too.

“Keep your mitts off that,” Gunny told him.

“It’s evidence at a crime scene. I need to secure it and send it for analysis,” he insisted.

“It’s my trophy by right of combat,” Gunny insisted. “Anything these two have I can lay claim to, right down to their socks if I want them.”

“I, respectfully disagree,” Harrison said.

“I call you out on it,” Gunny said. “You can meet me in the North Hub corridor bright and early tomorrow morning, and if you can kill me the bag… all of it actually, is yours.”

“You would meet me over pistols?” Harrison asked, shocked.

“I challenged,” Gunny reminded him. “You can pick any damn thing you want. For all I care we can go at it buck naked with nails and teeth. You might consider how much good pistols did these two.” Gunny made a dismissive wave at his handiwork.

Harrison looked at the fellow with the rail wrapped around his neck, the other with his neck bent at an impossible angle, and thought about it. When he looked at his boss, Jon, he got no support at all. The man looked back at him with a poker face that said it wasn’t any affair of his. That said a great deal right there. Nobody was stepping forward to be his second.

“I withdraw my assertion. You are correct on the custom sir, and I will publish it.”

Gunny just nodded like it wasn’t of any particular consequence, and gathered his stuff, including his prizes, checking the men’s pockets.

Jeff and his ladies arrived from down corridor, Jon and his men trailing behind after his attempts to keep them at April’s apartment fell on deaf ears. April was terribly concerned for Gunny and had to see up close he was unharmed.

Jon told Harrison to dismiss his men and run an after action in the morning. He was about to turn away hoping Gunny and the three fresh from the moon would let him return with them to April’s apartment, when the elevator arrived again and the doors opened.

James Weir stood there frozen, looking at the bodies, armored up figures and his acquaintances. He made no move to step out and looked over at the control panel. He’d have pressed a button again to go away if Jeff hadn’t waved him forward.

“Come on Weir, come to April’s apartment and we’ll explain,” Jeff promised.

James was understandably dubious, but to his credit went with them.

Jon made a motion to his men they were dismissed and followed, still hoping he’d be welcome to stay and hear what James had to say.

*

They arrived at April’s and all sat around her table to talk. Gunny put the bags by his feet and started unloading them on the table. Heather was introduced to James as a partner.

“I’ll listen to your proposal, but I’m constrained by my partnership,” James started.

Jeff cut him off with a chop of his hand and a glaring look. “I didn’t call you.”

That left James gap mouthed, astonished.

“One or both of those idiots laying back there on the ground, dead, called you. They used a computer generated avatar, a CG image to spoof the call as from me to draw you in to a meeting. I’m sure they intended you nothing good. Jon was on to them and was going to intercept them and arrest them, but they had the bad luck to have Gunny here get on the elevator with them.”

“What did they do on the elevator?” James asked Gunny, still not following it all.

“I was getting off the same level as them, so I interfered with them gearing up in the elevator. They had armor and probably face coverings to put on, then come down here and wait for you, in the lock I’d imagine. It’s regulation full locks have to offer shelter in case of a pressure drop if the cubic they serve isn’t occupied. They didn’t know the kids were home and the corridor hatch would be locked,” he said nodding at April, Heather and Jeff. “They disarmed me and cuffed me to the rail in the elevator. Obviously I couldn’t let them out to make trouble. I didn’t know who were aimed at. But they weren’t Homies and I knew they were up to no good.” None of them made an issue of him calling them kids. He was older and there was too much affection both ways to get huffy about it.

“I have your… I mean, I have their call on my pad. It’s quite believable. Would you care to see it? Any of you?” he asked, seeming to belatedly realize they weren’t all the same team.

“Put it on the screen if you want,” April invited. “I for one was amazed you could be fooled and would like to see it. I hate the sort of avatars people use as answering machines.”

“Please, I’d very much like that, and perhaps even a copy,” Jon requested.

James fiddled with his pad and April allowed him to link to her screen.

Jeff appeared, speaking earnestly.

“Zoom in tight on his face and let me see some detail,” April demanded.

It was right, down to the individual eyelashes.

“I suspect this is technically correct, right down to the iris scans,” Jon said. “But the lighting is odd. There aren’t any distinct shadows, as if he’s in a portrait studio.”

“And totally unbelievable to anyone who really knows him,” Heather said.

April nodded agreement.

“The word choices are not his,” Jon said. “This is a con man speaking with his voice. Jeff rarely qualifies anything without attaching probabilities. He never reaches up with his hands in the video, like Jeff does all the time to play with his collar, and he doesn’t do Jeff’s little head tilt for emphasis at the close of a statement.”

Jeff looked at him, a little distressed, and held his hands together like he was controlling them. He did however tilt his head each way like he was cracking his neck.

“I know his office and where he goes on the moon,” Gunny said. “I know the walls here and in the cafeteria and at Dave’s. He wouldn’t be sending something like this except from a secure location, and that plain off white wall behind him is unknown to me. Besides, he’d have one or both of the girls with him and even if they didn’t stand right behind him he’d look every once in awhile when they moved or just to check on them.”

Jeff couldn’t help himself, he checked on his women when reminded, as accused.

“Some of the face movements are his,” April agreed, “but they don’t match his words.”

“As if Jeff would ever say, I have a proposition for you,” Heather said. “He doesn’t use that word. He’d think it sounded risqué. That’s an Earthie language pattern. He’d say proposal or business opportunity or even a contract. The image could be done with one good three hundred sixty degree scan, but these people must not have enough hours of audio to do accurate word choices and patterns.”

“I’m touched you all watch me so closely,” Jeff said. He didn’t look touched, he looked like analyzing all his mannerisms made him uncomfortable.

“Then… you aren’t offering me any business deal?” James still asked Jeff to confirm.

“Nope. You can propose something if you wish. Our general consensus ,” Jeff said, making an inclusive wave at Heather and April with his hand returning to his own chest. “Is to keep our business partnerships with Earthies to a minimum. We probably have too many already.”

“They alluded to a device in that video,” Jon said, looking at James. “Is this something to do with the space ship drives you told me your company is working on?”

James looked from Jeff to April and then back to Jon, as if he was waiting for one to blurt out what they knew.

“Don’t look at me,” Jeff said. “It’s not my place to speak about your business.”

“I’m sadly not used to this much in the way of ethics in business,” James admitted.

“Ethics is a social construct,” Jeff said. “I don’t always get social things, but that’s why I have partners. April in particular teaches me when I lack social graces. Unless there is something we don’t know about you… my best guess is the two recently dead gentlemen were going to act very unethically with you. Perhaps kill you or kidnap you to coerce you.”

“But how do they know anything about my… business?” James asked suspiciously.

“We’ve been watching these two since they came on station,” Jon said. “They are from Earth and we haven’t been able to backtrack their travel or financial links sufficiently to know who they work for. Wherever the leak was I’d say it was on Earth. If I’d been able to arrest them I intended to put them under the helmet. We have no silly laws against it.”

“You didn’t give them your, “Howdy I’m the sheriff hereabouts and I have my eye on you,” lecture?” James asked.

“When they come in, trying to not appear associated with each other, and skulked about asking dock rats and low lifes about buying guns instead of just walking in and buying them across the counter, I knew an honest approach would be wasted. I wasn’t sure if they were dealing in something like drugs, that they couldn’t believe wasn’t prohibited, or were more spies. But their whole demeanor spoke to deceit and dishonesty.”

“More spies… ” That phrase didn’t get past James.

“Maybe we still have a leak Earthside,” James admitted. “I’ll talk to my partners about it.”

Neither did Jeff miss that qualifier, still.

“I do what I can, but it’s your butt. You better watch it yourself and not depend on me to always see somebody laying an ambush for you. Maybe get some private security. April here keeps Gunny as a bodyguard,” Jon explained. “And Jeff has… people.”

“Where, would I find somebody of similar… ability?” James asked, but looking at Gunny.

“Well I’m obviously tied up most of the time. Besides April I do little side jobs, but I have some senior partners who can devote time to the level of protection you seem to need. I’ll introduce you to Christian Mackay if you wish. The man is just absolutely frightening,” Gunny said, but said it as a very positive thing. “Shucks, I can call now and get him or one of his boys to escort you when you walk out the door here if you want.”

“I need that. And as much as I didn’t like seeing so many publicly armed when I got here, I better avail myself of it. That’s permissible from what you said?” he asked Jon.

“If you know which end to grab,” Jon said. “We get a lot of new people who got their gun knowledge from videos. They’re more a danger to themselves than any protection.”

“No, not a problem. I grew up on a ranch. I had to know guns, long and short.”

“In that case pick one if you want,” Gunny offered. He stood and took two pistols out of his side pockets. He looked at them carefully for the first time. “They appear to be the same. Take them both if you want and wear a brace of ‘em. Can you do two handed mojo?”

“I don’t know, I never had opportunity to try,” James said looking puzzled. “You carry extra pistols around in your pockets, and you aren’t even aware they’re the same?”

“They belonged to the gentlemen in the elevator who assaulted me,” Gunny said. “I took them away after they had no further need of them. I have my own, set up the way I like them. They look brand new, but you might have a competent smith check them out for you.”

“Could I have the serial numbers before they’re gone forever?” Jon asked.

“Thank you,” James said, after Jon was satisfied. He checked them for loads and got them in his own pockets without sweeping anybody with the muzzles or blowing his foot off.

Maybe he’ll do OK, Gunny thought.

*

After one of Mackay’s men arrived and escorted James away, Jon stayed on and chatted.

“I get the strong feeling James thinks you know much more about his business than he revealed to me.” His eyes swept them all to show he wasn’t just talking to Jeff.

None of them seemed inclined to volunteer anything.

“Don’t you think I need to know much more about what he’s doing if it’s creating security concerns for Home?

“It’s a trade secret at this point,” Jeff said. “I don’t think it will impact our military standing for quite some time. When that happens it will be both public and obvious. I can’t advise you if the agents after him were from a government or a commercial rival… or what. I have very little of any practical value to you to reveal.”

“You’re not a commercial rival of his?” Jon asked.

“Not yet.”

“Are you going to try to find out if we don’t tell you?” April asked Jon.

“Of course! I think I need to know, even if you don’t. I won’t promise not to investigate.”

“Jon may be misguided in this, but he is an honorable person,” April said. “The two of us do have a formal agreement to be allies. If we tell him, in very general terms, what James’ company is working on, and he agrees to hold it very closely, it would save a lot of man hours and harm nothing.”

“How closely?” Jeff asked. “I won’t harm James.”

“Just him,” Heather suggested. “That’s sufficient for him to direct anything needed.”

“All right. I can agree to that,” Jon decided.

Jeff thought about it and nodded.

“James has invented a superluminal space drive which propelled an unmanned drone from the solar system. We suspect it went to another star, but we don’t have absolute confirmation of that. The probability is however very high.”

“Do you understand how it works?” Jon asked.

“Yes,” Jeff said with no hedging.

“Can you make the same thing yourself?” Jon wondered.

“Yes, we know how, but we’re not going to do so,” Jeff said, as an absolute again.

“But he hasn’t sent a manned vessel?”

“One assumes that is the end goal of the whole project, but there are a lot of obstacles, dangers, and unresolved design problems before that is practical.”

When Jon looked like he was trying to find other questions Jeff cut him off.

“That’s all I intend to say about it. That’s sufficient to your need to know.”

Jon nodded and saw it was time to leave, rising. He looked at all the things Gunny had removed from the dead agent’s bags and laid out on the table. Nothing seemed all that striking. If there was something there he needed to know about he’d have to trust his friends to tell him. He wouldn’t beg and he sure as hell wouldn’t meet Gunny in the North hub corridor.

“All that raises more questions than it answered,” he complained before going.

Jeff looked surprised. “Jon, that’s a feature of life, not a bug. Everything is interesting.”

Chapter 17

“You do know he will run your statement through verifying software?” April asked

“He’s welcome to do so,” Jeff said. “I meant every word I said. I can’t speak to the future, but what I said is exactly what I plan at the moment.”

“But you already built a drive based on the same math!” April objected.

“The math describes a very complex reality,” Jeff said. “Our drive depends on a completely different manifestation of natural law described in that math. This is like saying if you invented the telegraph you also invented the radio. Not true unless you wildly stretch your definitions.”

“I’m not sure you shouldn’t have been a lawyer if you can argue that,” April said.

“The difference between a quantum star drive based on the electric force and one based on gravitational force is more than theoretical, it is quite a practical difference using radically different hardware and engineering.”

Gunny looked from one to the other, shocked. “Hello? Is there something you forgot to tell me? You were speaking to Jon of superluminal drives. Correct me if I’m wrong but that means faster than light, right? And now you are saying that besides whatever James made you have another flavor that should work?”

“Yes, but it’s secret,” April said. “You can’t tell anybody.”

“The normal process is, you swear somebody to secrecy before the big revelation,” Gunny said. “That way they can decline to receive the secret if it would be burdensome.”

“Well, you either agree to keep it secret or we cut you off, right now, before you’ve heard all the best parts of the secret, and the whole story about how it happened,” April threatened.

“There’s more? Lots more? Where did you learn to negotiate like this?” Gunny demanded. “Though this pushes the line between negotiate and dictate under duress.”

“It’s her fault,” April said, pointing at Heather. “The lunatics at Central are terrified to go to her court and present a case. They go in all full of righteous indignation and emerge broken.”

“It does cut down on the number of frivolous cases I have to hear,” Heather objected.

“But if I agree I get the whole thing? Not just little pieces of it like Jon?” Gunny asked.

“Gunny, you not only get the whole story, you get to go with us,” April promised.

“OK. I want a ticket. Tell me.”

April turned to Jeff. “You start with the boring science stuff first. I’ll make us lunch.”

*

“We’re shorthanded today. Aaron didn’t come in, and no message either. You may have to pick up a little of the slack. I’ll try to cover as much as I can myself,” Cook promised.

That didn’t fill Karl with the utter dread it would have in the first week. Cook didn’t yell at him anymore. He had a lot less reason Karl had to admit. Also he would likely pick up an astonishing amount of the slack, since his efficiency still amazed Karl.

“We’ll do two entrees for lunch instead of three. Maybe I should cut off custom breakfast for the morning,” Cook said, frowning at the idea.

“Just double the special order price on the board this morning,” Karl suggested. “Tag it as a temporary thing. That will keep most people from demanding something special.”

“Good thinking,” Cook agreed and keyed the change in the menu screen. That was extravagant praise from Cook to actually say something and not just nod. “Go ahead and get the breakfast buffet started and I’ll work on prepping lunch.”

Karl checked that the grill was up to the right temperature, tossed frozen hash browns on the hotter side of it and went to the freezer to get chopped peppers and onions.

Aaron was in the freezer, arms behind him, staring at the door. The look on his face was one of despair. What really creeped Karl out was his eyeballs were open but frosted over.

Karl lost all track of time again, standing at the open freezer door, staring at him. Cook came up behind him, announcing he’d flipped his hash browns in a somewhat irritated voice, and then stopped.

“Oh crap.” Cook reached past and pushed the door shut hard. “Come over here and sit down,” he ordered, took him by the arm and walked him to the chair at his desk. He actually shoved him down with a hand on his shoulder or he’d have just stood there, all locked up.

Cook leaned past him and worked the com. “I need a security officer in the cafeteria kitchen, and an aide from medical that can handle somebody in emotional shock.”

He gave Karl what was probably meant to be a supportive double pat on the shoulder, and went back to move the hash browns to the holding side of the grill.

*

“So, you think we can keep this as a trade secret and use it instead of selling the tech for vast sums of money?” Heather summarized.

“Yes, the Earthies don’t have the tech to modulate gravity. They know we have something, but not what. My dear step mum’s discovery was pretty serendipitous, people may go a long time and never make the same accidental discovery she did.

“I will hold this as close as the gravity lance or the compensators on our ships. I’m willing to lose a vessel to keep it a secret, and we’ve upgraded our self destruct systems. If the Chinese stole a ship now it would never get to the point where I had to bombard it on the ground to destroy it, like before. I’m confident of that,” Jeff said. “But I have to take issue with the idea we could make ‘vast’ sums of money licensing this.”

“It seems like you could name your price,” Heather said.

Jeff shook his head no. “Ignoring the fact we’d have to reveal the nature of my mum’s quantum fluid, which I’m sworn to protect, this is the sort of secret that’s too big to expect anyone would respect patents or licensing agreements.”

“Well the Chinese will steal anything, if that’s what you mean,” Heather allowed. “The scum even sell it as your genuine product with your patents and trademarks printed on it.”

“Not exactly. This isn’t a new computer chip or nanotube desalinization. What we have here is closer to the bomb at the end of the First Atomic War. If the US had patented the idea of the fission weapon what would have happened? Do you think the Soviets, that’s the Russians of the time, would have paid royalties on the tech? Or any other nations?” Jeff asked.

Heather didn’t say anything.

“Sovereign nations take what they feel is needed for their survival,” Jeff continued. “We couldn’t sell the drive without opening up the possibility they will figure out the tech and duplicate the acceleration compensator and the lance. They might even get ahead of us in using it and figure out things we haven’t. In my opinion we’d be risking Home’s survival, risking the possibility of any independence from Earth within the Solar System.”

“May I remind you,” April said, mostly for Heather’s benefit. “We don’t even have regular relations with North America. They say we are in a state of war. Not only are they not going to respect our intellectual property rights under any system of law right now, but they have demonstrated they will repudiate their solemn treaty without any provocation.”

“I just have a hard time thinking we’ll have this and not share it,” Heather admitted. “I know they have this other, similar tech. But from what you are saying it will take them a lot of time and effort to make it work. Maybe even lose people and ships while we have something better right now.”

“If they had the sort of character you are displaying, by worrying about the rest of humanity, I’d want to share it too,” April said. “Instead, I just had to shoot back at them for basically no reason just a couple months ago. They wanted to kill Jeff when he was no threat to them, just because he’s a spacer and a Homie. It’s nice to be nice… if people will let you. If this was Central and Mo came to you with this tech on a platter, would you just give it away for the common good?”

Heather looked shocked, her face hardened and then got angry.

“You’re right. I’m here taking a little vacation and in two days I’ve gone soft in the head. If I was sitting at my judgment table in my audience hall I’d have never thought to give the swine an advantage. The Earthies tried to kill Home, they bombarded Central and tried to enslave my landholders, they’ve tried to infiltrate my domain and I dreamed for an instant they wouldn’t use anything they get to work against us? Well, I have my sovereign hat back on now.”

Jeff blinked at the transformation.

“I think we’re agreed then. We can reconsider the matter if circumstances change. The one factor we can’t change right now is that my step-mum restricts the production of the quantum fluid. I find it hard to argue with her,” Jeff allowed, “because she has indicated she does so for security considerations. Given everything China has done to try to steal her work and get her under their thumb again, who can blame her? She holds parts of the process strictly to herself and has no partners who know the whole thing.”

“Even your dad?” April asked.

“She said he didn’t want to know. But she assures us if something happens to her all the important details will be delivered to us. I have no idea how.”

“If it was Earth, I’d figure she had her attorneys holding it for her,” April said.

“If I can figure out how to make it, without snooping on her. I will,” Jeff said. “I’ve been looking at everything she worked on before this last project, trying to see the progression of her work and thought to see what led up to it.” He looked embarrassed. “Mostly at this point I think I’ve learned she’s a lot smarter than me. But here’s something to consider, if we get to the point we have a secure location we can offer her as a site to manufacture it, outside this solar system, she might be willing to expand and trust others with no access to Earth.”

“So you want to bring her in on the jump drive?” April asked.

“I want you to think about it, as a way to get as much fluid as we need.”

“I couldn’t give her any guarantees at Central,” Heather admitted. “We found another spy just recently. There’s still just too much business back and forth with Armstrong to ever think things are fully secure. So you are envisioning a very small outpost with very little traffic back and forth? At least not much personnel movement?”

“Yes. I’m afraid anyone making quantum fluid would have to accept never going back to Earth. It’d too risky. I’d like to keep going until we find a place with liquid water and enough resources we aren’t dependant on Earth for much of anything,” Jeff said. “Far enough the Earthies won’t trip over us the first week they get their drive working. “

“If it’s an oxygen atmosphere you’ll have to find a living world,” Heather pointed out.

“Yes, and we may never find one,” Jeff admitted. “But if we found a water world with carbon dioxide, we can easily make our own oxygen and get started on Terraforming it to eventually have a free oxygen atmosphere.”

“We need a complete bio-library to try something that complicated,” Heather said.

“We already planned on doing that even if we never went to the stars,” Jeff said. “Just in case Earth does something incredibly stupid.”

“Point,” Heather admitted. “And gathering bio stuff for the French put us a long way closer to it than if we were just doing it for ourselves.”

“And yet, with all we’ve sold them, we’re still selling them cheese,” Heather marveled. At their shocked look she added. “We don’t call it that of course. They’d have a fit. It’s soy enhanced, mock-dairy fungal loaf.”

“Yum,” April said. “With marketing like that how could they resist?”

*

“I had the pads from the two creeps in the elevator cracked and examined in detail,” Gunny said. “This is the CG program they used to spoof Jeff. I’m going to keep a copy for our security association, would you like a copy for your own use?”

April looked at the offered memory card with suspicion.

“It’s been cleared thoroughly of having any bad stuff in it?” April asked.

“Squeaky clean, and the computer guy accepted a copy of it as his fee. He said a big video studio might have proprietary stuff at this level, but it’s better than any commercial stuff on the market. It’s big, but I was told it can do better work than what we saw.”

“I can share it with Jeff and Heather?”

“I always assume you share everything with Jeff and Heather.”

“Thank you, Gunny. Did you find anything to indicate where they were from on Earth?”

“Not a blessed thing, and I told Jon that. He asked again for the bags to do exotic stuff like look for grains of sand and pollen. I let him, but bad guys like this work all over, they move around. Even if he finds something, that doesn’t definitively link them to any one region or boss, but it made him happy.”

“Nothing else on their pads?”

“Nothing I’d want you to see. Just the sort of creepy stuff you’d expect lowlifes to have.”

*

Karl was back before the lunch rush.

“Can you work?” Cook asked, “I’m not saying a thing against you if you need a day off.”

“Nah, Medical said the same thing. What am I going to do? Lay in the empty barracks and try to play a game or something? Doing something is better.”

Cook nodded. “It’s like trying not to think about the blue monkey. The harder you try not to think about something the less you can avoid it.”

“I think you really understand. I never saw a body before, and I don’t think it makes it any easier that it was somebody I know,” Karl said. “You weren’t shocked. You’ve seem dead people before haven’t you?”

“I was a soldier. I’ve made a few,” Cook said, and shrugged. “If you need to see he isn’t in the freezer and everything is normal go look. Maybe it will help get the old image out of your head. Aaron said he thought the Armstrong people would get to him here. Heather didn’t believe it, and I didn’t think it was likely, but I never thought they’d get to him here in the kitchen where he worked. I changed all the door and storage codes. Of course if they have a fire and rescue card or an administrative card that won’t help.”

“They were stupid to do this,” Karl said, disgusted.

“How so?” Cook asked, with lifted eyebrow.

“Heather knew she still had one spy loose. When she caught Aaron they could have just laid low and let her think he was it. Now they’ve told her she still has at least one,” Karl said.

“You know, sometimes you’re not as stupid as you look.”

*

“This isn’t anything like I thought designing a starship would be,” Jeff said. “I had all sorts of ideas saved up for a huge multi-deck ship with crew in shifts, science officers and dedicated medical staff, every sort of supply and equipment for any imaginable planetary surface, rovers and aircraft and multiple landing shuttles.

“Now I’m trying to decide between a crew of three or four and a dozen hats for each of them. If we land anywhere it will be the main vessel at risk, so we’ll need a really good reason to put down. Better to just do a flyby survey with one ship. The best chance to be able to refuel with minimal equipment is ice around gas giants. Comets take too much chasing and planetary surfaces use too much of it up lifting from them. So I find myself designing a harpoon to spear ice chunks and reel them in for processing. Not with a big barbed end, but big pads of nano-grippers.

April smiled, and then snickered. “Have you named this ship yet?”

“No, I’m open to suggestions.”

“How about the Pequod?” April asked.

Jeff frowned. April’s mirth made him distrustful.

“I don’t recognize that at all.”

“It’s the ship in “Moby Dick”, the book about the white whale.”

“I haven’t read that. It was offered to me and it seemed impenetrably dense with old language, besides being dark and depressing. I read a few paragraphs and cracked it open a few places at random, read a few sentences and took a pass on it.”

“Cracked it open? You had an actual paper copy?” April asked.

“My family did when I visited in India. It’s been awhile.”

“You read more than me then. I just read the study notes,” April admitted.

“You don’t seem the sort to buy study notes to me,” Jeff said surprised.

“Not for a class, no. But somebody alluded to the book and how it was classic literature and one of the items basic to cultural literacy and understanding of Western Civilization, blah, blah, blah. If that’s true I’ll have to pass on both of them,” April said.

“Propose a serious name, that doesn’t connect to a story of pointless obsession full of weird religious references, and I’ll consider it,” Jeff promised. “With my luck we’d meet an alien race of whale-analogs, with who we’ll get along just fine, until they research the ship’s name-sake.”

“All right, I’ll think on it. Do you have any thoughts for crew?” April asked.

“One. I was very impressed with how Barak handled himself on the Yuki-onna. I haven’t searched past that. A pilot will be very difficult. There is nobody star flight profile qualified.”

Well there was one, but April wasn’t going to remind him.

“Before you expend too much effort, Barak may have some thoughts on it himself.”

“That’s a good idea,” Jeff agreed. “I actually have him working on how we might change crew selection policies, but we haven’t finalized that project.”

“Heather hated going home. She’d denied herself too long and really needed a vacation. So when you want to talk to Barak let me know and we’ll go do it face to face and get another visit in with Heather. She’ll appreciate it,” April said.

“That sounds good.”

Chapter 18

“There’s extra in my account this pay, somebody screwed up,” Karl said staring at his pad.

“You’re the prep-cook now,” Cook said. “Different rate.”

“I didn’t know,” Karl protested.

“You’ve been doing the work haven’t you?” Cook asked gruffly.

“Some of it. We’ve sort of both been doing everything Aaron used to do.”

“And when we get a new helper you’ll be doing all of it, and I’ll be relieved to be done splitting it with you. We’re short of personnel for everything. They can’t just come up with another warm body like that,” Cook said snapping his fingers. That was an unfortunate choice of words he immediately realized.

Karl had an uncomfortable flash of emotion on his face, and then after a pause nodded an acknowledgement. “Thank you,” he finally managed.

*

“I have a match for the tall guy you offed in the elevator,” Chen said.

“Have you been watching gangster movies again?” Gunny asked.

“No, but I’ve been talking to Earth agents. I’m not sure where I picked that up. Since when do you mind a little euphemism?”

“Some euphemisms tend soften the impact of an act, this is the other kind, that renders it even uglier by showing depraved indifference, making it common,” Gunny said.

“That’s interesting,” Chen said. “I never thought about it that way. I think I’m going to have a hard time deciding which group a lot of them fall into.”

“Don’t waste too much effort on it. They tend to migrate with use as people recognize them for what they are and the softening effect first fails and then reverses.”

“Conversation with you is always interesting, almost as interesting as April, but with you I don’t have to sit thinking after which of five ways you could have meant something.”

“With her, when in doubt, check your radar for incoming,” Gunny said.

Chen laughed, and said, “I’ll add that to my list of cute sayings about her.”

“You have a list?”

“Yes, I’m saving it for my biography.”

“Given your history, it may be worth your life to publish it,” Gunny warned.

“You don’t think I’d release it while I’m alive do you? I’ll arrange for it to be published posthumously,” Chen assured him.

“I’m probably in it,” Gunny surmised. “One more reason to let you live, but I’m actually a little surprised you’re calling me with his ID before April learned it. I’m starting to think we should just save money and farm intelligence out to her.”

“I have a guy, who has a guy, inside Turkish Intelligence. She only seems to have people everywhere off Earth. The taller fellow was one of theirs. No idea who his companion was. Probably just a hired minion.”

“Turkish? We used to just worry about North Americans and Chinese, now we have Turks, Bolivians, and… who knows what others?”

That didn’t sound like a ‘what others?’ pause to Chen. It sounded like an, Oops I almost said too much pause, but he let it go.

“Thanks. This is going to change my attitude,” Gunny admitted. “I used to figure anybody not North American or Chinese was probably a legitimate business person. Now we have to watch everybody. Jon said that before, but I just thought he was paranoid.”

“For sure he’s paranoid,” Chen agreed. “He’s also right.”

*

Jeff and April got Barak to talk with them when he had a day off duty. It was hard to find a place to do so with privacy, the cafeteria here was so small a whisper could carry across it. There wasn’t any sort of real hotel yet, and April still hadn’t acted on setting up an apartment near the administrative cubic. Heather had to go do some work and hold an audience before she was free to be with them however, so they had the use of her apartment. A place Barak hadn’t seen but a handful of times despite being Heather’s brother.

“I’d be very interested in being the all around general space-hand and gopher on a long range mission,” Barak agreed, “but you are going to have to be a great deal more specific about where and for how long. If I learned one thing on the iceball mission aboard the Yuki-onna it was that I need to know a lot more before I’ll sign on for another. I wouldn’t think of committing until I know the other crew and should one need replaced I need the option to drop out if I don’t like the replacement. I’m not going to fly with a flaming jackass who will shirk his duty like last time. It’s a wonder we survived.”

April didn’t say anything. She wondered if Jeff understood how much Barak had grown up and changed? This was not a good start to recruiting him and Jeff needed to turn it around.

“I’d have no problem letting you have a voice in the crew choices,” Jeff said. He didn’t mention Barak was supposed to be working on a crew selection process. The reality of it was Barak was too busy to finish it, and it wasn’t his fault.

“You already have an experienced crew, who’ve shown the ability to save a mission after it all turned to crap on them. Why don’t you use them?” Barak asked.

“They’ve got new responsible positions here. If I read it right, in good circumstances. I’d never assume they’d just all drop their jobs and come over to a temporary position. It could turn out to be a long term thing, but I can’t promise. I’m not presuming you will do so just on the basis of friendship or family. It’s a business decision ultimately.” Jeff said. “Though perhaps you could use your influence with them to at least get us a hearing?”

“Quit generalizing and tell me what you are offering, or stop wasting my time,” Barak said.

“OK, this is confidential,” Jeff said.

April held her breath… if Jeff asked him to be formally sworn to secrecy Barak was going to be insulted, and rightly so. They had a much closer relationship than that. Or at least April thought they had.

“We now have an effective star drive. There’s a Brazilian team working on a drive and once we knew the principles and math involved I saw a workable variation on it and made a drive module. We want to sent a small ship on a voyage of exploration. I don’t intend to delay until we can send more than one ship or a huge ship. So there will be risk and little chance of rescue if things go bad. It will require a great deal of caution and resourcefulness.”

“Wow… I’m not sure I’m up for testing a completely unknown drive. I’d love a star mission, but not a potential suicide ride. Just how fast does it go and is there a possibility you could test it in a robotic vessel first?” Barak asked.

“April and I already took it to Alpha Centauri and back. It’s not totally untested.”

Barak stared at him, shocked and confused.

“Then why aren’t you on all the news channels with everybody going nuts. You should be famous for… well, a very long time.”

“Fame is fleeting,” Jeff said. “I had a similar conversation with April. Columbus discovered the New World, the Americas, right?”

“Well, my history classes said the Scandinavians had sailed to the continent before, but Spain stayed and established colonies and remained in contact between there and Europe from then on, so yeah he got the credit, or to hear some tell it the blame,” Barak said.

“How much was he rewarded, how much of all that new real estate did he get?” Jeff asked.

“They never talked about that. I don’t think that was in the history books,” Barak admitted.

“No wonder. He got to be a governor and things went well, for awhile. But he had a falling out with the Spanish Royalty. They decided one of his captains was really the better sailor and more responsible for the success of the voyage, even if he didn’t conceive it. He basically lost it all. He sued and eventually his heirs got what you’d regard as a pension and a minor bit of property. A pittance of the wealth of two continents.”

“So, how do you avoid the same fate?” Barak asked. “Fame is better than nothing. You said this other guy is working on a drive too, right?”

“Yes, but there are problems. I don’t expect them to be operational for some time. What if Columbus hadn’t done everything so publicly? What if he’d quietly built his ships and not announced where they were going, and kept the new continent secret for as long as possible?”

“It seems like that could be hard to do. The crews would talk. People would start to wonder where all this new stuff was coming from,” Barak protested.

Jeff just looked at him, which was a silent invitation to think on it.

“But you only want a crew of three or four,” Barak said, doing his thinking out loud.

“And such a small crew we can afford to bring in for a substantial cut of the action. So to spill the beans would be to destroy their own benefits,” Jeff explained.

“A cut of what? You want to pay shares instead of flat rate?” Barak asked, still not seeing it.

“An entire star system, if we can find one worth owning,” Jeff said. “How much wealth is in our Solar System? How much can your belly hold? If we find a world how much of it can you use? What would you do with a whole continent? It would consume your life to manage it.

“I can’t see you wanting to be tied down so young in life. I managed to avoid it consuming my life when I got Camelot from the Chinese. There was real danger of that happening. Maybe just an island. We saw Tonga together. I can imagine something like that as a private estate.

“But can you even imagine one percent of everything around a star? I’d pledge that to our crew if you want. There’s never been a king on Earth that rich in all of history.”

“Oh.”

“Or, I can pay you a straight flat rate easily enough,” Jeff said, “if you want a sure thing, instead of the biggest lottery ticket in history.”

“My pilot friend would come in for free, just to be on a starship. That’s been the goal of everything she has done since she was little.”

“I will ignore that, and not take unfair advantage,” Jeff said.

“No. I wasn’t seriously suggesting that. Just… talking. You guys haven’t been missing for any long period of time, so how long did it take, roundtrip?”

“We had to stop, turn around and build some speed back up, but the actual transition,” Jeff looked at April, “the jump from star to star, we had no way to measure. I don’t think it takes any time at all,” Jeff said.

“I was looking out the ports, forward. A few of the stars just blinked and shifted to slightly different locations,” April said. “Faster than anything I could perceive.”

“That’s just crisp,” Barak said. Jeff looked confused.

“That’s, not the newest slang, but only about three months out of date,” April supplied.

“Got it,” Jeff said. “I’d hardly think limp to ever be a positive.”

“We’ll have to present this to Deloris and Alice,” Barak said.

“Will they agree to keep it secret?” Jeff worried.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Barak informed him. “I’ll tell them it’s secret.”

That gave April some interesting insight into their relationship. Barak wasn’t as dominated by the older females as one might assume.

“That’s three, if you can persuade them to come in,” Jeff told Barak. “Any thoughts on recruiting a fourth? I’m leaning that way already.”

“I have a fellow Kurt Bowman, who doesn’t have ship experience, but a lot of hours in a suit. He’d be valuable for any sort of EV work, which is about the riskiest thing we might do. He is also bright enough to cross train for other work as a backup.”

“I remember him. He went back down to Earth and it didn’t work out. He had a difficult time returning,” Jeff said. “I found him unusually modest for a Beam Dog.” But he wasn’t saying anything else favorable to the idea. Time for Barak to drop the bigger reason on him.

“You may remember all the problems on the Yuki-onna were social at their root. The captain and the XO were neglecting their duty to find time to be intimate that couldn’t be arranged or explained within the normal duty cycles,” Barak reminded him.

“I’m not very good at subtle social things,” Jeff confessed, “but that was far from subtle.”

“Well a huge advantage of Kurt as crew is he’s already socially integrated with the three of us, precluding that sort of problem from arising again. He’s been living with us for some months now. Just like you and April and Heather,” he added in case Jeff was totally clueless.

“Oh. We’ll have to interview him then, and seek a consensus what other areas he should cross train to support.” Jeff looked thoughtful for a moment. “You might even continue such cross training beyond the basics and put a fine polish on them over the course of your trip.”

“I’m sure that would work,” Barak agreed. “It will help if we don’t have rigid job titles and duties beyond what is required for flight certification and a clear command structure.”

Jeff nodded agreement and clearly had another sudden thought hit him.

“If I can recruit all of you, it’s going to be difficult to adjust and to find replacements. Both Mo and Heather are going to have a fit with me,” Jeff predicted.

*

“Who do I have to kill?” Deloris asked. It was a tempting offer, but Jeff declined.

“Sure. If my friends are all going I have to go along,” Alice said.

“Pull the other one,” Kurt said. “Nobody is even close to making a star ship. You guys think you can pull an elaborate joke on me that easily?”

*

Jonathan Hughes climbed the hill behind their chalet. It was the south side of the hill and things were warming up, but he still needed his homemade snowshoes to reach the top. It was too steep to attack directly but he zig-zagged back and forth. It took him all morning and he took his time, remembering his wife’s admonition not to die of a heart attack exerting himself.

When he got to the top he examined the trees carefully. He picked one not at the very top, but slightly downhill towards the south and their place. He wanted one that would give him a view over the others down slope. What he was going to do would kill the tree, but he had no shortage of trees. He was more concerned with it being visible, but there were other dead trees standing, so it wasn’t that unusual. The bright wood cuts he made he’d smear with mud.

Jonathan had a light ax, carefully sharpened and started chopping foot notches in the tree to allow it to be climbed. He stepped in the first, decided it needed a bit more depth, tried it again and found it much better. Lifting his other leg, he rubbed the sole of his boot on the other side to mark where the next notch would feel right to find with his foot.

Stepping back down the mark on the bark was about a third of a meter higher. They were mature trees, he’d need somewhere around twenty notches to the top, and then two on the same level to stand in when he got up there. Maybe some sort of ledge or a fold down seat. A board on a rope might do. No way would he finish today.

He also had a pair of heavy steel eye screws with a twelve millimeter threaded section he’d stolen from down the road. A neighbor had a steel cable hung between them to limit access from the road. Not only did he not want that left hung to advertise there was anything there to be guarded, but he had use for the eye screws. The vacant cabin had a lot they’d find useful.

A fall now was a scary thing. There’d be no ambulance or helicopter ride to a modern hospital. He would pretty much heal on his own or die from any serious fall. As tall as this tree was he had no illusions which. He used the eyelets to secure his safety line, dropping down three steps and removing the bottom one when he had the one above in. A bar through the eyelet helped him screw it in and out.

When he got to the top he’d leave the last one screwed in flush, and secure a thin cord through it looped to the ground. He’s used that to pull his good rope through the top eyelet when he came back to climb the tree. In the summer he hoped the perch would allow him to see all the way to where his road met the paved state road. But today he only got a bit more than the bottom quarter of the tree cut in steps. It would take several visits to get as high as he was sure the tree would support him and still not break off with two foot notches in it.

Jon rested and drank some water, and headed home while he was sure he had light.

*

“You’re a lot calmer about this than I expected,” Jeff said.

Heather did an elaborate shrug. “It needs doing. I will say, they are welcome to continue to make themselves useful between flights. Assuming you base them here? For pay of course. They have been shuffled back and forth between jobs as it is, so it wouldn’t be all that different. Oh! You might do the fellow Kurt a favor, since we have resources in… people. He hasn’t heard from his sister in awhile and is worried about her. If any of Chen’s agents could find her it would ingratiate him to you for sure.”

“They do need to be based here, because Home is still impossible for accommodations. And if you have work for them it eases what I need to pay them when they aren’t on flight duty. I’m already going to need to sell off some investments and shares to build a starship,” Jeff said. “See if you can find out the sister’s name without making any promises, and I’ll pass it on.”

“How are you going to explain or hide a ship that doesn’t appear to have any commercial purpose? People will see it but eventually become aware it isn’t making regular freight pickups. It won’t be seen docking places the Chariot docks. It will be absent inexplicably,” Heather said.

“April had an idea for that. She suggested it be used for regular freight runs so people do occasionally see it docked at ISSII or even dropping to Earth, since that’s within its flight profile. Actually, it will have a bit better performance than Dionysus’ Chariot. Some of the equipment for exploration can be made in removable modules, freeing the holds up. She also suggested we let the rumor be leaked that it is used for smuggling, which would explain why some of its flights may be ill documented”

“So, the crew will have a bit less free time right there, in order to fly those missions, because you aren’t going to be able to hide the nature of the beast to anyone sitting at the controls. Those won’t be removable,” Heather surmised.

“True. The new equipment will be so obvious I can’t just have software controls that can be hidden behind a password. For example I’m designing a system to harpoon ice moonlets. Even if I designed it to be removable the mounting points would raise questions.

“April and I are planning on doing some flights, but she is adamant I not take it to Earth. We still don’t have any idea how they knew I was on that flight to the Isle of Hawaiki when they shot at us.”

“You obviously still have a spy on Home,” Heather said. “Welcome to the club. I’m quite sure I have one too. I had a spy we uncovered and they got to him and killed him.”

“They managed to reach him while in your custody?” Jeff said, surprised.

“Not exactly. I turned him back loose to work his usual job. I just cut him off from reporting, but trapped here, and left him hanging out to dry. They assumed he was corrupted or turned and did him in. He predicted it, but didn’t have the craft to prevent it. Silly really. By the time they could reach him I had extracted everything of use from him, and killing him just verified that they still have resources here.”

“You didn’t give him any extra security?” Jeff asked.

“We don’t have extra anything to waste on spies. He was fortunate I didn’t shoot him dead where he stood and send his body back to Armstrong for a message.”

Jeff said nothing. Being sovereign had definitely hardened Heather. They had to go home tomorrow. This was a bad time to stir up an argument with her just before leaving.

*

“James Weir was noted as command pilot on a couple departures Local Control broadcast while you guys were gone,” Chen said.

“You didn’t drop me a message,” Jeff said, not angry but surprised.

“It wasn’t anything that required immediate action.” Chen thought a little about it and revised that. “It wasn’t anything that required any action. It still doesn’t. Just be aware he’s continuing his lessons, and one assumes Dave is continuing his assembly work.”

“And we have no idea when the two shall come together,” Jeff said. “I asked Dave about doing some assembly work for me, and he said they were just hammered with work and no point in talking to him for a month.”

“He’d talk about new work ahead of actually having floor space and men free to put on it. But by how much?” Chen asked.

“At least a week, more likely two, because that’s how long the fab shops are running behind who he’ll want to give a heads up for new work,” Jeff guessed.

“So you think Weir will have delivery in maybe six weeks?”

“Yeah and then possibly do some testing and a shakedown cruise. An orbit to orbit to the moon or Earth. Nothing that will use a great deal of fuel, because I doubt he has big reserves.”

“If he does a round trip it will likely be to Centauri like the probe. And then a big announcement when he returns. We should plan on how that will move currency markets and stocks, where they are freely traded again. Make a list and I will too, before we talk and influence each other. I’ll ask April to write an independent prediction too.”

“You don’t seem very excited by the idea we may have star flight,” Chen said.

“It’s the next logical step in the progression,” Jeff said. “Sometimes these things have to wait on both theory and hardware. When both understanding and technology reach a certain point then it just becomes a question of who will apply them. That’s how the atomic bomb was. There were several groups working on it and only the imperative of war made them spend the money to rush to a solution.”

“This is a much better thing for everybody though,” Chen said. “A positive development.”

“I certainly hope so,” Jeff said, and smiled slowly. “Talk to you later, Chen.”

Chen looked at the blanked screen. That smile and farewell were so out of character for Jeff. It nudged all the intuitions trained by Chen’s career in intelligence. Jeff was his boss, but perhaps he should run that conversation through the verification software and see what key words it tagged as outside his usual responses. Let it pick them and run the conversation again watching Jeff’s face at the points the software said he was outside his usual envelope.

*

“I really wonder what would have happened if we had jumped not aimed at another significant mass,” Jeff said. “I’m looking at the math and thinking about the sudden appearance of virtual particles. It was so easy to jump to another mass, it makes me suspect you could jump without any motion at all.”

“I hope you don’t want to go try it. I’d miss you. Notice… I’m assuming I won’t be along, not being particularly suicidal. If you do just push the button,” April said, stabbing a finger in mid-air, “which way will you go? Say off somewhere a bit, out between here and Mars. Just a random direction? And how far? It would be embarrassing, not to mention lethal, to end up inside the sun, or materialize a few meters above the lunar surface. My luck would be we’d pop into existence facing the wrong way and no time to roll it over.”

“The device itself has an axis that means it is aimed. Mass would still matter,” Jeff said. “It would tend to move along the gravitational gradient at which it is pointed, towards the nearest mass. How far is an interesting question. Velocity would still matter too, but at what balance? When does your velocity balance or overcome the local gravitational gradient? When we tested our module it was at what you’d label the highest power setting. I wasn’t sure we’d see any measurable effect, so I didn’t make any provision for starting at low power and working our way up. It was simply on at full force.”

“Would it be hard to alter it to do that?” April asked.

“No. It would require a little different controls and a few small changes to an electric motor inside the housing. It needs some more instrumentation too. I have no idea if it will build up heat if you cycled it repeatedly.”

“Stick it inside a drone and test it again,” April suggested.

“Not inside a drone,” Jeff said, “There’s a reason I put it on a grapple off the nose of the Chariot. There’s a flat plate of my mum’s special stuff in there, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be on the wrong side of it when it cycles. No more than you want to be on the wrong end of a gravity lance when it’s activated.”

“If you are redesigning it anyway, can it be made skinny so it will fit through a coffin lock?” April asked. “Then we won’t have to be a spectacle taking it through the corridors every time we need to fit it to the Chariot and use it.”

“Maybe. I’ll have to see. The actual working guts of the thing, yeah,” Jeff admitted.

“Oh… is that something you could use as a weapon? Get up close and cycle it pointed at another ship?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure you wouldn’t both jump, and I don’t know what would emerge at the other end. You might be fine, or have velocity towards each other, or be commingled. I don’t want to try it any more than you want to try random activations with no target.”

“Could we afford a drone with a grapple on front to go test it?”

“Not from cash. I can sell something, or sell out interest in something already proved out as profitable. That should at least get us a good price,” Jeff said. “I’m already forced to do that to start the design work for a star ship, what’s a little more?”

“When you sell something you should ask first rights of repurchase,” April said.

“Why? I don’t anticipate any windfall I could use for that.” Jeff said.

“it’s psychological,” April insisted. “It says this is still going to be something desirable, and I’m not just dumping it. I’d take it back if I have opportunity.”

Jeff nodded. “It makes sense when you explain it, but I’d have never thought of it.”

Chapter 19

“This is Barney,” Cook said. “He’ll be general gopher and clean-up like you used to do, pretty much whatever needs done. You know the drill. I’ll train him myself.”

“You don’t want me to show him what I used to do?” Karl asked.

Cook looked at him funny. “You’re prep cook. That doesn’t include supervision. Do you remember Aaron telling you what to do?”

“I… seem to remember him telling me to do this or that a few times, yeah,” Karl said.

“If he did, it was because I told him to,” Cook told him. “If he neglected to mention that it was an error. It’s impossible trying to work for two bosses. If you need him to do something you ask me if I can have him do it. If I tell Barney to do something and you tell him different, figure it will be your butt meeting the meat grinder when I find out. Understand?”

Barney looked dismayed at the confrontation.

“Yep, I’ve got it a hundred percent, Cook,” Karl agreed.

Cook just gave him a stern look, and a very short nod, and went back to work.

*

“You’re hiding something from me,” Chen said to Jeff. “I thought we were on the same team. If you’re not satisfied with my services time to say why, or even just – “Yes that’s true.” - and I’ll find other work. It may not be as interesting and it may not even be as lucrative, but I assure you I can make at least my base retainer in the current market.”

“I have no doubt you can find other work,” Jeff replied, “or form your own company before lunch. You already do enough side work to have a core business. I have a secret, but it isn’t any displeasure with you that’s making me keep it. Right now seven people know and it scares me that many know. You know the saying about how many can keep a secret?”

“Yes, and it’s extreme. It may be absolutely true, but we have to deal with the real world, not theoretical absolutes. I may not be the spy-master Papa-san is, but if I had to ask for a job title I expect I’d be your spy-master. Neither are we talking personal secrets. You are up to something. If you keep those kinds of secrets from me I don’t want to work for you anymore.”

“Come over and let me tell you face to face,” Jeff said. “No, better yet meet me at April’s instead of my office. She has Gunny in there and I think it’s even more secure. But bring your gear and sweep it before we talk.”

“You’re not being melodramatic?” Chen asked.

“I’m being paranoid, and they really are out to get me,” Jeff said, holding his head still, and scanned with his eyes side to side. It fell short of funny.

“OK, I’ll meet you there.”

*

Jeff called ahead to see if April was there. For once he’d have let himself in if she wasn’t there, but both she and Gunny were home, and happy to have them.

“Chen is going to quit if I don’t tell him about the drive,” Jeff told them, when he arrived.

Gunny blinked, and ran that through his head again.

“How is it, if he doesn’t know, he is willing to quit over it?” It seemed a reasonable question.

“He said I’m keeping a secret from him, and it offended him. He seems to feel I lack trust in him if I will keep a secret from my own primary intelligence officer. I simply don’t have any other secret it could be. I’m not sure how he’s on to me, but he is.”

“That’s silly,” April said. “It’s not like you are married to him. People have secrets. If I just blabbed everything I know there would be all kinds of damage, people divorcing, partnerships broken, maybe a few people taking the airless stroll. Sometimes a little discretion keeps the peace. People even fix things and heal sometimes if some busybody doesn’t expose everything in public where they can’t back down.”

Gunny looked shocked, and then thoughtful.

“I don’t doubt it,” Jeff said, “but I think keeping this secret now would do us more harm than revealing it. I value Chen, and bringing him in now lets us use him when we get to the ship testing stage. I’d have done so eventually anyway. He just didn’t need to know quite yet.”

“Tell him that. It’ll make him feel better,” April said. She considered the time, went to the com and ordered lunch for five. This would probably take awhile and the extra was because Gunny was home. He’d eat doubles easily.

Chen, when he came in, explained Jeff asked him to do a scan for bugs before they talked. He opened a small portfolio and went to work. April reminded him she had small two hunter killer bots loose in the apartment. She didn’t want him zapping them by mistake.

“We also have a broadband radio that listens constantly for the sort of bug that saves up data and then transmits it in a short pulse.”

“That’s good,” Chen agreed, but continued. “This last test is something new,” Chen said, holding up a small box. “Your bots scan for changes, but this simply is simply a camera that looks for unusual small dots or bumps. It’s similar to a sky watch camera to find asteroids.”

He walked around with it on a stalk, scanning the entire living area. April was just as glad he didn’t ask to go into their private rooms. She still desired some privacy.

The machine alerted in the kitchen, and zeroed in on the wall behind the counter.

“What do we have here?” Chen asked, and leaned on the counter edge. There was a tiny oval dot on the bulkhead. “I’m going to zap it before I collect it if that’s all right?”

April nodded an OK.

Chen got a device like a chubby pistol with bell on the business end. When he pressed the switch on the back it charged with an audible whine that soon passed above human hearing frequencies. When a green light lit up beside the switch he didn’t hesitate. Chen put it over the little bump flush to the wall and triggered it.

It was still clinging there when he removed the EMP machine. He leaned close and looked at it with a pocket microscope. “I think it’s a little darker.”

Chen put a sticky note below it on the wall, folded it over creasing it and lifted it back up. He flicked the offending bump off with a pen knife and laid it on the counter. Twisting the barrel of the microscope to a higher magnification he examined it again, frowned, and applied the blade of the tiny knife to it.

“Can you tell what it is?” Gunny asked.

Chen drew his lips in a thin line and blushed.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a tomato seed,” he admitted.

Everyone laughed but Chen.

“It’s funny, but it wouldn’t have been if it was a little bot,” April said. “Honestly, better safe than sorry.”

Chen at least smiled at that.

They returned to the couches, Chen packing his gear back up silently.

“I understand your feelings,” Jeff started. “I’d have eventually revealed this to you when I needed your help on the matter. At most a matter of weeks.”

Chen inclined his head to acknowledge that, but he wasn’t assuaged yet.

“Where to start?” Jeff said, and raised his fist to his chin tapping it in frustration.

“Have April tell me if you can’t,” Chen suggested. “I assume she knows. She’s often displayed the ability to be succinct.”

Jeff blinked at that and gave April a permissive wave.

“Jeff figured out what Weir knew, improved it, and we have a star drive. We’ve already been to Alpha Centauri. We’re going to keep it secret, get out there quickly, and snatch all the best real estate we can lay our grubby little hands on.”

Chen gasped, laid his hand to his breast like a shocked maiden instead of a master spy.

“My God, the sheer chutzpah of it.” It left him boggled.

“Yes, April does have an economy of form when she tells a story,” Jeff allowed.

“I forgive you,” Chen said.

“Well that’s big of you,” Jeff allowed. He seemed a little peeved.

“I knew you were smart, but this… is just too much.”

“Oh, I’m not all that smart. Weir conceived the actual theory,” Jeff admitted. “I just was aware of some aspects of reality he hasn’t had opportunity to learn.”

“I’ll guard this most carefully,” Chen promised. “Nothing we do should hint at it.”

“Well, we have to actually build a ship. The only sure way to keep it secret would be to do nothing, but as much as practical we’ll hide it, yeah,” Jeff agreed.

“It doesn’t surprise you he wants to keep it secret?” April asked.

Chen regarded her like she was insane.

“Are you kidding? I’m a spy. Keeping secrets and prying secrets out of others is what I do. Secrets are power if they have real value. I thought you of all people would understand that. Not the sort of secrets children and fools create just to have a secret. This secret has tremendous power. Jeff understood that immediately without anyone having to tell him. Just the aspect he wants to exploit now is tremendous. To acquire holdings, worlds! Before anyone else has the ability.”

“But Weir, or somebody using his work is going to catch up eventually, and they’ll have all the fame of being credited with the discovery,” April pointed out.

“Bah! A pox on fame. Even if Weir gets a big public spectacle and politicians hanging medals around his neck, a few hundred years from now what do you want to bet the history books say – “Unknown to them at the time, citizens of Home were already among the stars.” It will all come out when they get out there and find you sitting on the choice parcels.”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” April admitted. “Just so we can hold it when they find us. I don’t want to be like the Indians, who must have looked at each other in amazement when the Europeans marched ashore and claimed where they already lived.”

“You know how to prevent that,” Chen said. “If the Indians had meet the Europeans on the beach with repeating rifles, and informed them they had a very strict immigration policy, things would have been a bit different, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but they were fragmented in tribes politically too,” Gunny objected. “Or they might have resisted even without superior weapons.

“Indeed, fix either shortcoming and we might be speaking Iroquois,” April speculated.

*

Happy sent another secure message.

The same two gentlemen are pressing me with a soft recruit. There are definitely two factions. One appears to be academics and civil servants, the other military or ex-military. Both see Mars as an ideal place to pursue a social experiment in isolation from the less desirable people of Earth. Just not the same experiment. They don’t have a neat category for me. The military fellow has intimated I will have to pick a side to get anything done on Mars. It’s going to be an interesting assignment. - Happy

*

Chen called Jeff and April. “Weir’s ship was big enough they had to bring it up from Dave’s shop in two sections. I’m sending the feed to you. They’ve joining them now.”

“Not much of a cabin,” Jeff said after awhile. “I’d say they intend to jump out and pretty much turn around and come back. Make a few observations and take some pix sufficient to verify it to everybody.”

“Which we neglected to do,” April reminded him. “We could do another run just to document we’re first if you want. The Chariot returns from an Earth run tomorrow and has a three day lay-over.”

“I’m content,” Jeff said.

“I’m wondering if he’ll do any kind of a press release of his intent before he jumps out,” April speculated, “or if he’ll do a round trip and then announce they succeeded?”

“He’s going to announce he’s making the attempt.” Jeff said.

“Why would he do that?” Chen asked. “He knows the drone jumped out, but this vessel is untested. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if it fails with everybody watching?”

“I have serious doubts he has enough fuel for a quick repeat. With all the horrid lies and pranks so prevalent in the news feeds, if he makes the claim, and can’t demonstrate the capacity to do it again quickly before witnesses, he’ll lose all credibility. He won’t be able to muster an audience a couple months later.”

“You think he’ll do it pretty soon then?” April asked.

“Within the week. Perhaps after a little testing or an orbit to orbit shakedown cruise.”

“Now that this big job is done, has Dave got back to you about starting our project?” April asked hopefully.

“No, but he may be holding the shop space open to do revisions, if they had some radical design work he might not trust,” Jeff speculated.

“That would be expensive,” Chen pointed out.

“I don’t know what their ultimate source of funding is,” Jeff said, “or how much depth it has, but so far they haven’t had to skimp on anything.”

“Maybe I should have been looking into that,” Chen decided, belatedly.

“Maybe I should have asked you,” Jeff said.

They both turned and looked at April without saying anything.

“How would I know?” April said, looking dismayed at their attention.

“But she didn’t say she doesn’t know,” Chen said, suspiciously.

“I noticed that,” Jeff said, nodding.

*

Jeff didn’t need Chen to give him a heads up the next day. His bots went nuts dropping a whole series of alerts on him for a long list of key words and phrases.

James Weir, space ships, translunar, star flight, Alpha Centauri, Engenharia Assustadora, Brazil, faster than light, Home, final frontier, even science fiction.

The newsies examined it from every possible viewpoint and interest, no matter how tenuous the connection. The effects on economics, politics, religion, and previous historic moments in spaceflight. The history of flight from hot air balloons and the required interviews with Flat Earthers, Alien Astronaut Cultists, and Apollo Deniers.

A few made fun of it just in case it was all an elaborate hoax, and there were several interviews with experts who flat out declared it was impossible and people would never overcome the immense distance to other stars, that perhaps a robotic explorer might someday return from such a trip, but so far in the future there might not be humans to know it.

The fact that some of the experts had doctorates in sociology or were diploma mill reverends didn’t keep the newsies from hanging on their every word.

“He’s going for it today?” April asked, coming in to look at the main screen divided up with a half dozen feeds.

“They did a transfer and lunar orbit while we were sleeping” Jeff told her. “A French ship met them in lunar orbit. Now they announced they will be leaving in a a couple more orbits and doing a Centauri transition.”

“The French fueled them up,” April said with certainty.

“Quite likely,” Jeff agreed. “Why don’t you order some breakfast couriered in and we’ll have it before we watch them jump?”

“What’s to watch?” April asked, but she was working the menu on her pad. “We had our drone much closer when their drone jumped out, and there wasn’t that much of a flash in visible light. Nothing spectacular to see from here or the moon. I suppose a good telescope could pick it, up if you could track him.

“They’ve arranged with a research radar on the backside to track them live and report when they disappear,” Jeff said. “That’s the feed in the bottom left corner.”

“That must be some radar. How far would the radar on the Chariot be able to see them?”

“If they are emitting to act like a transponder works, quite a long distance. But if you mean from the bounce as a dead target, not far at all. Even if they have a pretty good cross section, or carry a corner reflector a few thousands of kilometers,” Jeff said.

“We’re going to need much better radar visiting other systems,” April insisted.

“That’s not going to happen until we have a lot more auxiliary power, and can direct it all into a huge array. We can’t even think about that until we have a much bigger ship.”

“That’s scary,” April said. “We’re going to have to go in strange places almost blind, relying on passive scan to see planets and stuff.”

“Telescopes,” Jeff agreed. “At least we have some decent automated search programs for the optics. Asteroid tracking has driven that tech to be quite advanced. On the other hand, when we go into a strange star system, I’d rather not shout and tell anyone we’re there until we have done a good passive scan.”

“Hmm… “

“Hmm, what?” Jeff demanded.

“Someone or something?” April asked.

“If they’re smart enough to listen for radar transmissions I’ll grant them personhood.”

“You think that’s a possibility?”

“At Centauri? No. If anyone visited Centauri I imagine they’d have been through here, since it’s so close. Out further yeah, we better plan on it,” Jeff said.

“That raises a lot of questions,” April said. Apparently some of them bothered her.

Jeff made a rolling motion with his hand to invite elaboration.

“What if they’re not friendly?” she worried.

“I wasn’t planning on going unarmed,” Jeff said. “I hadn’t thought about it before, but our first visit with the Chariot we were armed, if somewhat lightly.”

“But I bet Weir isn’t.”

“Well no. First of all he couldn’t afford the mass. Second of all it’s a Brazilian flagged vessel even if it was built here. Dave wouldn’t arm them outside L1.”

April’s pad made a light >ding<. “Breakfast is on the way,” she announced.

*

Jeff usually wasn’t a fussy eater, but when he saw he had a bagel he poked it with one finger distastefully and made a face.

“What? You don’t like bagels?” April asked. “I got it because I got the fake cream cheese from the moon and jam. They go together. I’m still learning things about you.”

“I like real bagels,” Jeff allowed. “Not an over cooked dinner roll with a hole punched through the center in a pathetic attempt to make it a bagel.”

“How long has it been since you tried one?” April asked.

“Years, since we first came up here. I would have been eleven. I had real bagels on Earth and was sorely disappointed with what I was offered here.”

“Honest, they’ve learned how to make them,” April said, despite his skeptical face. “They’re enough trouble to make right that they only make them a couple times a month. You shouldn’t give up on something forever just because it doesn’t work out once. Try it. If you don’t like it I’ll finish it for you. I consider them a treat.”

Jeff took a bite, not bothering to add anything, and chewed. It was a good sign he needed to chew. “It does have a crust now,” he admitted. “And much firmer.” After a second bite he started loading it up with cream cheese and jam. “Much improved I admit. It’s been so long since I’ve had one the memory fades, but this seems close to the real thing.”

“Probably as close as the cream cheese,” April said, getting a little dig in.

“There is promise here,” Jeff said in faint praise. “I wonder if I ordered some onion bialys sent up special express, if they could duplicate them?”

“Ruby and Wanda are from Earth and they’ve been back on vacation when it was still safe. Ask them if they’re acquainted with them. They’re both foodies, I’d be surprised if they haven’t had the real deal. I think a special express package starts at five hundred dollars Australian now, for a fifty gram envelope, so one bialy will be a few thousand dollars, and still at least eighteen hours old if they give it a police escort from oven to shuttle. It would be much cheaper to ask them if they’re familiar with them. Just don’t be negative about it when you ask them.”

“OK I will, next time we eat there,” Jeff agreed.

“Look, here comes something on the feed.”

*

They made the window for the Brazilian news bigger. The commentary was in Portuguese, but they muted that and had it auto-translate and caption. It had a few snags in English but nothing you couldn’t figure out pretty easily.

The news director must be skeptical. There were a lot of qualifying statements. Everything was carefully attributed as a release from Spooky Engineering or James Weir or one of his partners. The portraits were straight off of their website and didn’t include any biographies. The Brazilian partners were featured more prominently than their North American partner.

The Pedro Escobar was shown assembled against the Hub of M3 with no mention of the habitat by either commercial or political name. The image was insufficient to make out much detail about it’s construction. This seemed a pointless exercise to Jeff and April since a dozen private cameras panned it from different angles in much higher definition. You could figure all those would trickle down to the space nut sites over the next couple days.

The Brazilian lady had a badly proportioned chart with improbabe orbital lines drawn showing the moon and Earth. It neglected Home or any of the objects in Earth orbit. The radar showed a simple dot with numbers beside it that indicated azimuth, inclination and signal strength, but no indication from what object. Someone had tweaked the system to add a time count to the display April suspected was normally displayed elsewhere. They showed the antenna farm for the radar and an exterior shot of the facility. There wasn’t any wider view of the radar equipment or the building interior. None of it seemed right…

“I bet that’s just a studio graphics setup and they just get a digital feed. The public expects a radar set to look like a First Atomic War movie,” April said.

“There’s no sweeping line periodically repainting the screen,” Jeff critiqued, And drew a slow sweeping arch with his finger like a ground car windshield wiper.

With appropriate hand waving by the Brazilian lady a dashed line ascended from the line depicting an orbit around the moon.

“I figure near a two hour run at a full G will give them as much velocity as their drone had,” Jeff said. “The effect is better as the mass of the vessel goes up too.”

“They’re going to have a hard time finding two hours of stuff to say,” April predicted.

“Don’t worry, they’ll say it all three of four times,” Jeff said.

He was wrong. They hit the same points more like five times and brought in marginally connected material towards the end. He was expecting they might start showing clips of old science fiction shows if they didn’t jump pretty soon. The European news had long cut away with a promise to return with an update.

The glowing dot on the Brazilian display vanished and they cut to Weir’s partners going nuts celebrating. The newswoman looked briefly dismayed that there wasn’t anything more spectacular, but recovered.

“Good for you James,” Jeff said, and saluted with coffee mug.

“You really mean that, don’t you?” April asked.

“Sure. You were the one, recently telling me you’d rather cooperate than compete, given the opportunity. I’d have loved to tell James I saw a twist on his work he didn’t, but we were both restrained by our circumstances from being open and allying with each other. He did a superb job and made it work even without my improvements.”

He didn’t say anything for awhile before he expanded on that.

“What they have now is sufficient. I can’t see any reason you couldn’t build a real star going civilization from it. They don’t need us to rescue them. In fact it will be good if they have ships coming and going,” Jeff decided. “It will make it easier for us to come and go. One will look pretty much like the other jumping out. We won’t have to skulk around. How ours actually performs can be our little secret, for awhile anyway.”

On the screen the partners were explaining that their vessel intended to come to a stop in the Centauri system. The ship would take some photographs and dump a commemorative marker out with a radar reflector, a plaque and return to lunar orbit within six hours. The news program promised to cover that too.

“And back in time for a late lunch,” Jeff said.

“Your belly is your clock,” April said, but it didn’t shame him at all.

Chapter 20

“It’s 1400,” April said.

“Ummm, yeah,” Jeff agreed, after flicking his eyes up and to the side in his spex.

“The Pedro Escobar isn’t back,” April elaborated.

“Oh, that’s not good.” Jeff frowned, but he didn’t say anything more.

“Can you think of anything that could have gone wrong?” April asked.

“You could probably make as long a list as I could,” Jeff admitted. “We don’t know much about his ship. It does have an experimental drive. It’s probably only the second one of its class built after the drone. I have no idea how much redundancy they built in the other systems.”

“They had to have a radio to talk to traffic control,” April said.

“Sure, but that isn’t much use on the other end. There’s nobody to talk to,” Jeff said.

“Just supposing, they got in trouble, how far can you talk on a standard ship radio?”

Jeff looked at her funny. “Not four light years. You know that.”

“I mean if we took the Chariot back to the Centauri system. If they were transmitting on the emergency frequency, how far away could we hear them?”

“I was afraid that’s what you meant. Happy said they used to have their construction scooter dish lock on and they’d talk to somebody in a rover on the moon. Both of those use about twenty five watt radios. Most of the ship radios work at that, but can boost to a hundred watts when they need to. Also our receivers now are better than when they started building M3. You can only do so much with the signal, but they are much better about the noise filtering algorithms.

“So a number… Out near a million kilometers, eight hundred thousand at a guess. It might break up a bit and you couldn’t transmit clean data without a lot of repeats, but you would know somebody was there. It would take some time to scan an entire quadrant of the sky with the dish though. Usually you have some idea where you want to point it.”

“Would you consider doing that, if they don’t come back soon?” April asked.

“Yes,” Jeff agreed, “because I’d hate to see that mind lost to us, and I just like him. But if we are going to do that it should be done quickly. You saw how close we came back in to Home and the moon when we immediately turned around, but if we had waited a few days would we have come in much further away? We just don’t know yet how much local motion we retain when we jump. It will take time and have its own risks to find out.

“The longer we wait the less chance we’ll find them. And it all still depends on why they didn’t return. We can’t really search when we get there. Just call out and listen for them. Frankly, they are probably dead. But if by some unlikely event they are just stranded, we might save them.”

“The Chariot is in dock and not set to leave soon,” April reminded him. “Why don’t you call now and have it prepped to go as soon as we can?”

“Yes, but two things. I’d like to still do a lunar insertion. Not only does it cover our tracks, it is more fuel efficient, and I’d like to take somebody with some serious EV experience. If we do find them rendering aid and bringing them across may be difficult.”

“The Chariot only seats four with the extra couches installed,” April objected.

“This is when you pick what the mission requires instead of your personal desire.”

“I can see that, but who else are you prepared to bring in on our secret?” April asked.

“Nobody, I’ll have Barak lifted to join me in a hopper while in lunar orbit.”

“I want to go, but everything you are saying makes sense. Do it,” she urged.

Jeff picked up his pad and put the plan in motion.

*

The most difficult call to make was his last. Dave appeared on the screen with his shop office behind him.

“I need to ask you something about James Weir’s vessel that is overdue.” Jeff said. It was obvious from his face that was heavily on Dave’s mind already.

“It’s nothing about it that would be secret in any way. Does it have a conventional ships radio with the normal frequencies including the distress setting?” Jeff asked. “Does it have a scan and lock utility on a dish?”

“What do you care?” Dave asked a bit testy. “You can’t go help him.”

Jeff refused to reply, but neither did he offer to go away. He simply gave Dave what he hoped was his best neutral poker face.

Dave stared back at him, but at least he didn’t disconnect.

“So, why would I ask?” Jeff said, hoping to make him think. “I’m in count to undock.”

“Undock for where?” Dave asked.

“I’m filing for a lunar insertion and then… well, that’s nobody’s business after.”

“I don’t believe what you are implying,” Dave said.

“You can listen to Departure control and see my filed flight plan. I’ll leave in a bit less than three hours and I assure you I will assume a lunar orbit.”

“No, I mean the then after part,” Dave said.

“You don’t think there’ll be any after? Maybe not. I’ll try to come back.”

“Does this have anything to do with that damn hood ornament I built?” Dave demanded.

“We aren’t going to talk about that,” Jeff said.

“You’ve been around that Lewis girl too much. You were never this difficult.”

“Perhaps I should ask her what radio the ship carries,” Jeff speculated.

“Dear God, she may know. Somebody told me when you sit down to bargain with her she knows how much change you have in your pocket when you haven’t counted it.”

“I’ve heard at least three variations on that,” Jeff admitted. “My favorite was about the fellow who doubted it and challenged her. He reached in his pocket to check her count and it was off. “Check your left pocket too,” she told him.

“In truth, I doubt she already knows, she’d have to call around and start asking her network a whole bunch of questions about you. That might be an inconvenience when they all start asking you what her interest is. As you said, people have this weird inflated opinion about her natural inquisitiveness.”

“It’s a SpaceWaz 3000 with dish and everything standard, but it can do single side band.”

“Thank you,” Jeff said and disconnected.

*

“Nothing,” Barak repeated. He’d scanned with the dish in the direction the system turned. That information hadn’t been easy to obtain. It had only caught up with him after they left lunar orbit. Chen couldn’t find a clear answer online, and had to actually speak with an astronomer to explain what he wanted to know. Small comfort that it wasn’t an Earth astronomer. At least it wasn’t Jeff himself asking how the rotational plane Alpha Centauri system was oriented to Sol’s, but it was a Home citizen asking, and one more data point some bright person could use to figure out they had jump technology too.

“Crap… “

“You tried,” Barak told Jeff. It wasn’t comforting.

“If they din’t get enmeshed in the rotation of the new system they should have heard us on omnidirectional radio, and if they did acquire local angular momentum entering they should be in the cone we scanned,” Jeff insisted.

“I don’t have any third idea to suggest,” Barak said. “Except the obvious one that they somehow didn’t arrive here at all.”

“I’m taking us back,” Jeff said, punching commands in the computer. They were already at rest having killed their entry velocity, and they were already pointed back home. So they felt no movement of the ship under them.

“Acceleration in twenty seconds. Secure your arms. Time for a quick scratch if you want.”

Barak ignored that. He could scratch his nose under three Gs acceleration, though carefully. They didn’t talk for awhile. There wasn’t much of anything to say that wasn’t depressing. Jeff didn’t waste power on the compensators. Three G was tolerable, and anything they ran used fuel. They wanted all the margin they could keep.

“Jump in a minute,” Jeff finally said. “The count showed in the corner of Barak’s screen and the drive cut out ten seconds earlier. He had time for one deep breath without an unseen companion sitting on his chest and the pinpoint of Sol ahead became a bright disc the ports had to darken to make manageable.

“Got it,” Jeff said. Meaning he’d acquired Earth and the moon visually, ahead but hard to one side. They’d moved in their absence, more than their previous jump, but still close enough the bright disc of the moon could be distinguished to one side of the Earth. It was a freaky big satellite after all.

“Autorotating and burn in ten,” Jeff said. Turning wasn’t the hazard heavy acceleration was so he shaved the warning time tighter.

“We’re beyond radar range,” Jeff said. “But everything looks to be about the right angle and distance we expected. Going by astronomical data and assuming there was no time shift we can be back in lunar orbit about sixty hours from now. We’ll know exactly when we can range the moon by radar. I estimate we’ll still have about a twenty percent mass reserve, and more fuel than that, because I had it topped off in case we needed the auxiliary power.”

“If it’s all the same to you. I’d just as soon go back to Home with you,” Barak requested. “They released me from any work schedule for as long as needed, so I have no report time I have to meet. That doesn’t happen often, so I’d like to take advantage of it. I can take commercial transport back to Central a lot cheaper than having you drop me off. I’d like to spend some money on luxuries we don’t have at Central and visit April.”

“OK, I’ve been staying at April’s and letting my hired man have my office cubic to himself. I’ll call ahead and tell him I’m coming back for awhile.”

“Why?” Barak asked. “It’s April’s place. Let her set the rules and tell us what she wants. I haven’t noticed her being shy to say exactly what she prefers.”

“You’re right. April would tell me I’m not her social secretary. But I am pretty comfortable with April telling me what to do for social things,” Jeff conceded. So I’ll just leave it that way and let her take the lead.”

“Kurt and I always let the ladies set the social agenda,” Barak admitted. “I can’t say it’s ever been anything but to our benefit.”

*

Jeff was reluctant to call and tell April about their failure. He was worried she would be upset and depressed and he was reluctant to be the instrument of that. But when they got in com range he knew not calling would be the same as announcing their failure. That might seem cowardly. Actually it might be cowardly he decided on reflection.

When he did call she took one look at his face and her own fell. He didn’t have to say anything. “Well you tried. Thank you.”

“I’m bringing Barak back with me. He wants a break from Central.”

“That’s good. Central is kind of small town boring. We need to show him a good time, take him to the club and send him home happy. See you at dock,” she promised.

The command chairs in the Chariot were side by side, Barak couldn’t follow all of that. And the conversation had been very one sided and strange.

“How did April take it? I didn’t hear you actually tell her we failed.”

“She read it straight off my face, I thought she’d be devastated, but she accepted it and moved on in a heartbeat.”

“Women are much more resilient than us,” Barak said. “Good thing, since we give them so much grief.”

“She wants us to take you out and show you a good time. At least as much as can be had on Home.” He hadn’t been a hundred percent sure it would be we.

“Which is a lot more than can be had at Central,” Barak assured him.

*

Jeff and Barak took turns at the shower, welcome after a couple days in a pressure suit. April offered drinks and said she was having wine, which was unusual for her. She wasn’t a big drinker. Barak took wine too and Jeff a beer. They relaxed and April left the screen on an environmental feed instead of news so as not to add to the stress level.

All the news services were still repeating the story of the Pedro Escobar’s loss with interviews with everybody from the President of Brazil down to James Weir’s former school mates and a sketchy biography of his copilot Martin Law. They covered his Canadian upbringing before going to space, and avoided actually saying he was a citizen of Home. They were being painted heroes of mankind. Not too far off the truth as far as April was concerned. Not that they didn’t plan to make a little change off the deal, but they’d have deserved it.

“Call me a cynic, but if those guys had come back in the six hour bracket they intended to half these people would be arguing they faked it instead of mourning them,” Barak said. “Give it a few days and there will be conspiracy theorists saying they did return and are living under other names in Cuba and it’s all a scam to get people to invest in their company.”

“Well they did do half of what they intended,” April pointed out. “Enough of a demonstration that I think they’ll have lots of investors.”

“But there may be a shortage of pilots wanting to make the same run,” Barak predicted.

“Throw enough money at it and you can do it with a very advanced AI and enough automation. I think that’s what will happen. They’ll go robotic until they feel it’s safe enough for humans,” Jeff predicted. “We could do it that way with enough funding.”

“How long will that set them back?” April asked.

“I have no idea. The numbers looked good,” Jeff insisted. “I thought we’d see James and his buddy back in a few hours, triumphant.”

“And you’ve been twice,” April marveled. “Though we’d be hard pressed to prove it.”

“Not exactly. While we were hailing the Pedro Escobar Barak and I took some pix of Alpha and we did some wide angle sky shots that will show star displacement. For our own history, and insurance in case we should ever need to prove it.”

“Why would we?” April asked, puzzled.

“Well, I considered claiming the system for the sovereign nation of Central, but I didn’t have time to discuss it with Heather, and I didn’t have time to make a marker with a radar reflector and a beacon pinging as a claims marker. But I could have.”

“Yes, you’d better ask her before you start claiming entire star systems in her name. I thought the plan was to go far enough away it would be some time before they catch up?” April remembered. “That makes more sense to me. Could we hold Centauri?”

“Yes I agree, and it’s looking like our system will be safer and more suited to long jumps. I’m even hopeful of other benefits I don’t want to brag on until I can prove them, but when you are sitting there with the light of another star streaming in the ports, the idea to just go ahead and claim it is very strong.”

“But this close to Earth, could you hold it?” Barak asked, echoing April.

“I suspect that even if I could the contest would be ugly,” Jeff said. “I’m much more of a reluctant monster than the Earthies paint me. I’d rather avoid conflict.”

“Amen,” April said, just a little tipsy. “Hold that thought.”

Chapter 21

Barak poured the last of the wine, and looked at the bottle funny. Then he moved it up and down weighing it, then snapped it hard with a finger to make it ping. “It’s glass, but this feels way light. Like about a third of what it should.”

“They started using new light weight glass last year,” April said. “We’re just starting to see them, and you’d be surprised how strong they are. They had a vid online showing them driving nails with one.”

“Empty or full?” Barak asked.

April looked stumped for a moment. “Had to be full. They’d have been whaling away like crazy with an empty, not enough mass to drive a nail.”

“I’m surprised they sell enough to space to make it worth making them special,” Jeff said.

April shook her head no, and then regretted doing that.

“Not just for space. They got cheap enough they save more than the costs of the bottles in freight, even on Earth. Air transport, and maybe trucks.”

“I got us a table later,” April said. “1900, but I’ve got to nap now or I’ll crash half-way through dinner. I call center, if you’re joining me.

Jeff looked at Barak who just shrugged, so they both got up and followed her. At a half G Jeff would take his chances with the edge. He had before, just a different threesome.

*

“You’re sweet, but we have a reservation,” April said to a half awake nuzzle a couple hours later. Half G makes it easy to vault over a sleepy partner and claim the shower. Especially when the wine has mostly worn off.

Both of the men wanted to freshen up as much from imagined grime after days in a suit as any actual lingering traces. Spacers have good noses and not offending is ingrained.

It was more a locker room atmosphere than intimate getting ready. Jeff looked at his pad for messages, getting into not-urgent levels while Barak hogged the shower.

“Who the devil would Shahab Parastui be?” he asked, stumbling over the last name.

“I have no idea at all,” April assured him.

“Well he lists you as his first business reference,” Jeff informed her and turned his pad for her to see.

“Oh Cheesy!” April said. “I’d rather go to his place right now than the Fox and Hare.”

“No wonder he listed you first. That’s quite the endorsement.”

“What does he want?” April asked. “I haven’t been to his place in months.”

“Umm, quick summary, he wants to set up at Home, because business is declining at ISSII. And to do that he wants a contract with us to lift a guaranteed mass of ground beef to home each month. He’s willing to offer minor shares in the new place for favorable rates and a long contract.”

“Do it. Well, do it if it’s possible. Run the numbers, but demand we have one discounted visit a week as co-owners,” April demanded. “His cheeseburgers are divine.”

“We have to sell stuff to build a star ship, not start new ventures,” Jeff protested.

“This isn’t an investment. I just want to eat there,” April admitted.

“It’s really good enough to go once a week? They will make you a special order cheeseburger at the cafeteria you know. I don’t think you go to the Fox and Hare half that often,” Jeff said.

“A club eats up time. Cheesy’s you can pop in for lunch and back out in a half hour. Unless you eat too much and end up in a stupor all afternoon, stuffed. But if it was here, easy to get to and not just a rare treat off at ISSII, I could control myself. Maybe. It’s hard to explain, but there just isn’t any comparison with what the cafeteria makes.”

“Even if I could supply the beef, and help with the move, there’s simply no way anybody is going to sell enough cubic for a restaurant right now. That’s why nothing new has opened in almost a year, and that only happened by the employment agency splitting their cubic.”

“Cheesy’s is in zero G at ISSII you know,” April reminded him.

“I think you told me once. But we have even less open cubic in either hub than spun volumes, less than ISSII, and it’s just as dear.”

“You’re tying all the zero G housing modules together as you build them, aren’t you?”

“I am, but I wouldn’t recommend a residential unit for a business. Maybe some light fabricating or a service company like accounting that doesn’t have a lot of walk in traffic. We have six units on a hub, a hub every six meters and a bit. Nobody will want to come home and find access to his unit blocked by traffic for a restaurant. I already have complaints how tight the tunnels are. Some people are already calling it the rat warren, and I can’t think of any way to discourage it. If I made them nice and spacious I’d have more volume in access than the actual useful cubic.”

“The only way to beat that is to give them something catchy to call it they’d rather use. If it sounds like something an architect put on the drawings it’ll never be adopted by the public. But I had a different thought. You have a terminal for the shuttle that goes back and forth between Home and your project don’t you?”

“Yes. There has to be a place for people to wait for it to come back. It holds about half again the seating of the shuttle, because sometimes it will get behind around shift changes.”

“Built Cheesy a restaurant module to hang off that. People will stop there rather than come all the way back to Home to eat. I’ll see if I can’t talk him into making a breakfast too.”

April frowned and thought about it hard. “Build a second one to put on the opposite side. I’ll pay for that and make a go of it or not on my own. You don’t have to tie any money up in it.”

“Why would you compete with your friend?” Jeff asked.

“I won’t. Not everybody likes burgers. Even I don’t more than once or twice a week. But I bet I can find somebody on Home working a lower paying job who I can steal away to make pizza. We have a ton of North Americans still, and it’s a staple down there. I had pizza in Hawaii, and the stuff they make in the cafeteria doesn’t touch it either.”

“Probably. I’ve been told pizza shops were common entry level jobs in North America. I do wonder if he can survive until we have enough people living there. We’ll only have forty eight units by the end of next month. He might have his heart set on being in Home proper.”

April shrugged. “Ask him. He can sell to Home too. The shuttle goes back and forth all the time. People can pick up a pizza from it when it docks. You can put in lockers to send stuff back and forth. You should do that anyway. It takes less room than a courier using a seat. He can pop a hot pie in the slot when it docks and give the customer or their courier the code to open it at Home. The trick will be positioning it so the people don’t get in each other’s way grabbing stuff from the locker and going back out against the passenger flow.”

“OK. I’ll tell him I’m having my people do the numbers and get back to him. Should I add anything from you?” Jeff asked.

“Tell him I want to know what will happen to his old space and can he, or we, still have a viable business there if it becomes something else, or goes to cheaper menu and maybe adds drinks. I think he might be Muslim so I don’t know if he’d allow that. Add the appropriate apologies if that’s offensive.”

“You think I’m finally socialized enough to finesse that?” Jeff asked, surprised.

“I think he’s enough of a gentleman to take the thought as the deed, even done crudely.”

“That’s better,” Jeff said. “I was afraid I was graduating.”

“Fear not. I have lots and lots of work to do on you still.”

Barak reappeared with wet hair. “Am I interrupting anything?” he worried.

*

Dinner was very nice. They ate at the Fox and Hare, then went to the Quiet Retreat to dance. Barak took a took a turn around the floor with April and then when the band did a much livelier number they both orbited around her. When the music went sedate again Barak made a yielding motion to Jeff and he hardly danced with April before Eduardo Muños appeared out of nowhere and demanded a turn.

When he sat down again Barak wasn’t there. He didn’t think anything of it, perhaps he’d gone to the restroom. Then he looked back at the dance floor looking for April and Muños, and there Barak was swirling a lovely brunette around. She spoke and he laughed and they seemed to agree to something. They left the floor and approached the table before the number ended.

Barak leaned over and spoke near Jeff’s ear to be heard over the music.

“This is Susan. She snagged me on the floor before I could get back to the table.”

Jeff inclined his head to her and she made a little wave with her hand held in by her waist. She couldn’t possibly have heard what Barak said.

“She wants to show me one of the private clubs the beam dogs go to down by their barracks. That’s what she does.”

That didn’t surprise Jeff. She looked young, naturally young, and very fit which was typical of the vacuum workers who had to work zero G in suits.

“I’ll catch up with you guys later.” Then he dropped his voice, which wasn’t really necessary, Jeff could barely hear him, and added, “Or for breakfast tomorrow.”

“All right. Have a good time,” Jeff told him. And was happy to find he meant it.

When Eduardo walked April back to the table Jeff made an inviting sweep of his hand to the now empty chair. Eduardo smiled but declined. He hooked a thumb off towards the other side of the room. Jeff couldn’t hear him either, but his lips said, “I’m with some people”.

Jeff leaned over and spoke in April’s ear. “Barak got invited to one of the informal clubs the beam dogs frequent.”

“I’ve heard of those. Gunny said they’d be illegal back in North America,” April said.

“I’m hearing just about everything is,” Jeff agreed.

The band finally took a break so they could talk a little easier. Jeff waved at their waiter and held up two fingers for refills.

“Yeah, Chen said he wouldn’t be surprised if they fined you for going a month with no other fine. I wasn’t even sure he was joking. Nobody here cares as long as it’s safe, and we have such strict codes for flammables it’s about impossible to set a place on fire. Did you know Halon is illegal in North America too? They wouldn’t let us use it before the revolution.”

“I don’t think I knew what it was back then. I was so green. Start a business and it’s amazing all the things you have to learn in a hurry. But why wouldn’t they allow us Halon?”

“The theory, is that compounds like that diminish ozone in the atmosphere and may let too much ultraviolet through, so it was banned,” Jeff revealed.

“But… OK you’re kidding me,” April decided, and gave him a skeptical look.

“Not even a little bit,” Jeff assured her.

“But our air doesn’t have anything to do with their air,” April objected. “If we have a release we will probably flush the compartment for smoke anyway, but it doesn’t get mixed back with Earth air. There is no way it could affect their ozone or sunlight.”

“All the evidence before your eyes, and you still think laws have to be logical,” Jeff said.

“Dear god how do they keep it running down there?” April asked.

“Short form… they don’t, way too often,” Jeff said.

Their waiter set drinks in front of them and whisked the empties away.

“Barak said he’d see us later, or for breakfast,” Jeff added.

“That’s fine, but he better not show up before main shift leaning on the door signal or I’ll kill him,” April vowed. “Just because we don’t need as much sleep now doesn’t mean I like it interrupted. I get cranky woken up early.”

“Really? Who told you that?” Jeff said, amused.

“A friend,” April said haughtily.

The interesting part to Jeff, was that April’s door wasn’t set to Barak’s hand, like his was.

Chapter 22

Breakfast was past and Barak hadn’t shown up. April didn’t seem concerned about it so he didn’t bring it up. Jeff was sitting on the couch with April, catching up on messages when he got an alert he had a higher priority message. He answered it quickly before they went away.

Dave Michelson of Advanced Spacecraft Service was not only waiting but had the video on. He was never chatty and found a text message more time effective usually.

“We’re freed up to start on your next project,” Dave told him. “But there’s something I’d like to discuss. I’d like to have my shop carry half the cost of the next ship you buid. I don’t know how you’ve structured it, if it’s all an internal project, or if you’ve brought in investors. But whatever half the ship cost is of the overall project then I’d like proportional shares. You’ve always treated me square, I’d take whatever percentage you feel is fair, but I want in the ground floor. I don’t just want a job for pay.”

“We haven’t announced any new project,” Jeff protested.

“I’m not stupid,” Dave said. “There was only one set of circumstances in which the information you demanded of me the other day would have any use at all. I’m really sad it didn’t work out incidentally.”

“That… event, wasn’t tied to any contract,” Jeff said, carefully. “So I realize you have no obligation to keep it confidential. But it would be of great value to me if you could do so.”

“I’m not trying to blackmail you. Far from it,” Dave said. “I don’t talk about clients’ business as a general thing, not nit picking details like a damn Earthie lawyer. I’d just like to get in on the action. If I’m first in line that’s sweet, but I’ll take what I can get. This is going to be big enough even a little piece of it will be a big deal.

“I haven’t brought in any investors,” Jeff admitted. “I was hoping we’d be able to carry it ourselves. Less than a dozen people are aware of the… current project. The thing is, I intend to build another drone and do some testing before committing to another ship.”

“Another drone like Weir built?” Dave asked.

“Not at all,” Jeff said. “We have a different set of waypoints for the project.”

“Oh… perhaps I didn’t understand,” Dave said, looking distressed.

“No, I think you do understand, basically. The objective is substantially the same, but I don’t intend to include suicide in my development calendar,” Jeff said.

“Ah, that’s fine then. If it takes a little longer than I thought maybe I’ll be able to chip in a little more. You might be able to cover the cost yourselves, but more money lets you build to better specs, with better accessories, and faster when you do start. Time is still of the essene, isn’t it?” Dave asked.

“Yes, but we’ve probably already said too much on com with this level of encryption. I’ll discuss this with April and Heather since they need to OK diluting the project with even one minor partner. Then we can meet somewhere secure and discuss it face to face.

“One other question. What if somebody else figures out what you did? If somebody comes sniffing around asking questions, what are you going to do, and what do you want me to do?”

“I intend to stonewall that question. They can assume anything they wish,” Jeff said.

“That’s fine with me. As for the drone. I take it that’s a step towards the ship. Don’t worry about it. I’ll start letting contracts as soon as I have data, and cover the cost of the whole thing if it doesn’t go over thirty Solar. You can dump the build files on me and go attend to more important stuff. I think you’ll like having a shipbuilder as a partner. Your stuff will get priority, and we’re the best. Tell me we’re not,” Dave challenged him.

“You are absolutely the best,” Jeff agreed. “And I mean that personally too.”

Dave blushed. He’d gushed more than usual. “OK, that’s enough until we meet,” he said, and reverted to his usual brisk form, disconnecting quickly.

April had spent most of the conversation leaning on Jeff’s shoulder after she heard the pad make a priority ping. Dave had seen her of course, but not acknowledged her. So she didn’t have to be brought up to speed.

“Want to tell me again how we’re going to have to sell a bunch of stuff to build a ship? The man was begging to pay for half and scared he hadn’t got in line fast enough,” April said.

“But it does dilute our interest,” he reminded her.

“I refer you to what you told Barak and his family. Even one percent of a star system would be more than any Earthie king ever grasped. And you, my audacious friend, have been talking about seizing a handful of them. I think we can afford to share some of that.”

Jeff nodded agreement to the financial analysis easily. What really stuck in his mind was that she said Barak’s family. He hadn’t thought of them that way, but it felt right.

*

The weather was definitely moderating. But the indoor-outdoor thermometer used batteries that died a month back, and they had no spares. Jonathan and Jenny had shut off the other rooms and lived in the kitchen for most of the winter. They had nowhere near enough wood to use the big stove in the great room, though he’d cut as much as he could. It was just a good thing the bathroom was built against a common wall from the kitchen for the plumbing. They opened the wall between them and removed one stud to keep the toilet from freezing.

They didn’t have a functioning pump, but melted enough snow to flush it every few days. He’d drained the pump and tank hoping it wasn’t damaged, just in case they ever got power again, but he wasn’t sure he’d got it empty. The pantry was against an outside wall so everything canned was brought into the kitchen to keep it from freezing and the door kept shut.

The small stove in the kitchen was fed carefully. It wasn’t a cook stove but it had to serve that function now that the propane was gone. Jon ruefully remembered how many times he’d considered his mother’s insistence on the small kitchen wood stove a silly waste of space. The wall behind it was now covered with crinkled aluminum foil, pinned up to reflect the heat. When spring came they’d probably wrestle the propane stove outside and put it under a tarp.

They wore coats most of the day and used every blanket and their sleeping bags at night. Jon thought that without propane they’d never use the main room or bedrooms in winter unless they had two more men stockpiling wood for the season. The ceiling was so high all your heat went straight up. It looked great in sales brochures but most of these cottages saw little winter use. To make it livable they’d have to put in a drop ceiling, and who knew where they’d get the materials for that now?

If they hadn’t taken these measures early he’d probably have been burning the bedroom walls and furniture to survive. The snow was too deep to harvest any new wood. As it was he intended to drop trees uphill and get the logs drying as soon as the snow was down to knee deep. Being on the south slope would help enormously. That hadn’t been a critical consideration when the place was built. All they’d cared about then was the view.

*

“What I’d propose is we take Dionysus’ Chariot out as an observation platform. We can put the drone through some tests and be within range to record everything. A couple days flight time. Far enough that directly observing it from Home would be difficult.

“I’d like to come along,” Dave said.

“We have four seats, but can you be away from your business that long?” Jeff asked.

“They seem to think so, to hear them on the shop floor. I suppose it’s time to find out. If they can’t deal with things for five or six days maybe I should know.”

“Your accompanying us will draw attention to our project,” April warned.

“Nah… If I go aboard early when I’m delivering stuff anyway and just don’t come off with my guys the dock hands don’t keep count,” Dave said. “There won’t be anybody from Security checking passengers off like a shuttle. Nobody will notice if we don’t make a big show of boarding together. You guys are public figures. I’m just one of the workers nobody notices.

“And when we come back?” April asked.

“Same thing. You guys get off together and depart. Anybody like a newsie will leave then or even trail after you. My guys come on and none of them are bright enough to count three guys in blue coveralls coming off instead of two.”

“We’ll have the pilot, Deloris, too,” Jeff reminded them. He didn’t absolutely need her for this test, but he was evaluating her right along with the equipment.

“Good, you use the same style suit as her and get on and off a few times with the helmet semi-polarized and they’ll be thoroughly confused. My crew will all mirror our spex and I’ll have one of my boys wear a knit hat and trade it off to me when we unload. People don’t look.”

“I never knew you had this devious side to you,” April told Dave.

“Thank you.” He took it for a compliment from her.

*

The four of them were forty eight hours out from launch. Dionysus’ Chariot carried the drone grappled to limit how much onboard fuel capacity they’d needed to design into it. Six hours ago they had disengaged from the drone, attached the now modified drive module, and let it make a small burn to separate and open up some distance from them for safety. The combined velocity wasn’t that great, but that was part of the test to see what would happen without a high velocity vector.

Carrying the drone externally also allowed them to put a toilet module and a zero G mini-kitchen in the hold spaces. It made the test flight somewhat more comfortable but no luxury cruise. They had coffee and a variety of precooked low residue meals and snacks.

Jeff indicated he’d start some tests when the drone was two thousand kilometers from them. The margin of safety was enhanced in his opinion because he’s have the drone oriented away from them. He was seated in the rear pair of seats with April. You could still see out the forward ports almost as well as the front pair and he didn’t have to share a view of his screen, which had some readings that revealed entirely too much about the device on the drone.

“What do you expect it to do?” Dave asked. He’d been holding that question in until now.

“It may do nothing. That would still be an important datum. I’m going to increase the… well, power isn’t exactly true. Field strength. Which isn’t a linear function of the power input. At some point we may see some effect from a stronger distortion in the gravitational field. The original device, before we modified it, was basically either full on, or off. I can control this fairly finely. In one percent increments easily. I don’t really want to discuss how that is achieved with the internal design of the system we put in the drone.”

“I probably wouldn’t understand how it works it anyhow,” Dave said.

“We don’t entirely understand it,” Jeff said. “But it works, which is enough right now. I’ve checked that the onboard navigation is functioning. It is oriented at a portion of the sky that has nothing within fifty light years, a couple degrees in any direction from the aim point. No large mass to latch onto for a quantum transition. Question is – What will it do if we can get it to jump in those conditions? Will it vanish to some point so unimaginably distant that there can be no recovery?

“The autopilot is designed to turn the vessel over and bring it back towards us. But if it is far enough away, the tiny errors in aiming back at us or in how far it jumps coming back could easily have it appear outside the range at which we can detect it.”

“Are you sure two thousand kilometers is enough?” April asked, uneasy.

“No, but the further away we are the higher the chance it will be undetectable if it doesn’t return exactly. More than absolute distance I’m counting on the vastness of space and our own low mass to protect us. It’s not going to latch on to something this small coming back at us.

“It’s like an archer firing an arrow across a big field, and having another bowman return it from where it falls. It would take a lot of luck at three hundred meters to get an actual hit.

“It will be transmitting a pulse every few seconds. If it jumps a very short distance we may be able to detect that. We carefully picked a frequency that won’t get any radio astronomers unnecessarily excited. If we recover the device after a jump I’ll test it again as long as we don’t seem in danger of losing it. If we don’t recover it then it is set to self destruct quickly.”

“Why quickly?” Dave asked.

“If it materializes in a distant star system, I’d consider it an attractive nuisance. Appearing suddenly a technological civilization might investigate it. I don’t want them to have time to be close before it destroys itself. Somebody might come to harm and blame us.”

“And you don’t want to share the tech with them,” April added.

“I thought that part of it was obvious,” Jeff said. “I’m starting at a nominal five percent. The device will cycle within a few milliseconds after a radio pulse. If it jumps straight ahead and appears within about five degrees of where our dish is aimed it can lock on it and it will show up on your screens when we detect it. The clock counting down on your screen will be to the next whole minute.”

“Five seconds from, mark,” Jeff noted. The number reached zero and nothing happened.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Jeff said.

April noticed Deloris closed her faceplate when the count started. She was impressed. None of them knew what was about to happen, but Deloris was in command of the ship. If something bad happened she’d bought herself at least a full second to be doing something useful instead of seeing to her own survival.

“Trying it again at ten percent,” Jeff said and counted it off again. Nothing happened.

“Nothing. Telemetry unchanged,” Jeff said.

Deloris noticed Jeff wasn’t surprised at all at the first failure, but his voice definitely had a disappointed tone at the second failure.

“A Solar says we get some action in the next two shots,” Deloris said.

“Ms Wrigley. When I asked Barak how I should deal with you as a person, he had very little to say, but he advised me never to bet against you, and added that if I did win a bet against you and heard the words “Double or nothing?” from your mouth to run. No thank you,” Jeff said.

“Just trying to make it interesting,” Deloris protested.

“I’m quite fascinated by the whole thing without more financial risk than is already sitting in that drone,” Dave informed her. That got a nod.

“Third try, going to fifteen percent,” Jeff said. He didn’t bother giving a five second call this time. Everybody knew the drill by now.

“Gone… ” Jeff declared off his screen feed. Three seconds later there was no new radio pulse to be seen on screen.

“There! Radio pulse detected, and another. But there was a hair more than a six second delay,” Jeff said. “Auto detected so it’s not far off dead ahead. Three second added delay means it’s about ninety thousand kilometers away.”

“Damn… so it didn’t jump out for the third galaxy away,” Deloris said.

“This is much more useful,” Dave pointed out.

“I have some major thoughts on this I’d like to share with you later,” April told Jeff.

Jeff looked at her, surprised she specified later, but didn’t argue.

“It should flip over and,” – an easily visible light winked briefly in front of them and slightly to the side out the front ports – “return.”

“That’s freaky,” Deloris declared. “It was here again, and then its radio own pulse caught up with it from out there,” she said. She was right, there was a double pulse on the screen.

“Fifteen hundred kilometers away and about five hundred off axis,” Jeff said. “It has retained its motion away from us.”

“Too close,” April worried.

“Should I take it out a bit further away for a twenty percent jump?” Jeff asked.

“No closer, that’s for sure,” April urged.

“I wouldn’t do twenty percent,” Dave counseled. “What if it’s not a linear effect? It may take it beyond reach or return. Since you can adjust it accurately just go for sixteen or seventeen percent.”

April and Deloris agreed. Jeff agreed readily and set the drone to come back on axis and allow it to continue to ease away. They waited for it to do so with a fuel conserving maneuver. There wasn’t a bunch of chatter while they waited. Everyone was thoughtful. April went in the hold and brought sandwiches and drinks for those who wanted them.

“There, it’s back in line and beyond two thousand kilometers again,” Jeff announced. “Going to seventeen percent as suggested.”

It vanished again.

They waited. Fifteen seconds later Jeff spoke up. “Any delay in reappearing beyond this we’re likely out of range with our dish. I hope I didn’t lose the whole thing.”

“There, it’s back.” Jeff said finally. “Three thousand kilometers out. Doppler says it lost some velocity away from us but picked up some radial to our long axis. It’s over forty degrees off our nose.” Nobody saw the flash this time since they were looking straight ahead.

“As far off center as it is away,” Jeff read off the instruments. “I’ll nudge it back to us. It won’t be much of a wait because that ends our trials. I can expend the fuel to hurry it back to us. I’m afraid I’d lose it next try,”

“Even if you have to make minimum jumps, this would get you around the solar system very quickly,” Dave said.

“Yes, but we need some new trials with better instrumentation,” Jeff said. “We need cameras and the ability to take star sightings from the drone so we can both navigate it and check where it has been when it’s recovered. We need to learn how it jumps pointed right at a large mass like Jupiter, or slightly to the side We don’t want to jump towards a gas giant and find ourselves half way to the core of the planet.”

“That makes sense. Grapple it back on us and head home then,” Dave said. “I’ll be happy to start modifying it for you.”

*

Dave called Jeff two weeks later, Jeff didn’t have the modified package ready to test in the drone, so he wasn’t expecting a call. He thought he’d be the one initiating the next call. It turned out to be something else.

“James Weir’s partners called and wanted to talk about building a bigger, better equipped ship along the same general lines of the lost Pedro Escobar.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jeff said. “They have evidence it works at least outbound. If they didn’t have the funds for a rebuild I was expecting they’d be able to raise the money from others now. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see other attempts to reproduce his success. After all, his basic paper on the subject is public and spread all over the data nets too far to recall. There are other players with deep pockets, big corporations and governments who can step in.”

Dave grimaced. “I wouldn’t assume that. I’ve been looking online beyond the original news stories. In fact I had my secretary pay to expand the search my clipping service does for the aerospace boards that I already watch for ship building. The only place with a consistently positive view of the ship disappearing are the space nut boards. The government sites basically say if there was anything to it we’d have already done it. They back up that assertation with lots of assurance from physicists that Weir’s original paper is flawed and not accepted by the mainstream community.”

“Where do they think the ship went?” Jeff asked.

“They commonly say a catastrophic failure would explain its disappearance, or fraud.”

“Well, that still leaves Weir’s original partners working on it,” Jeff mused aloud.

“Yes, but not with my help. They seemed to assume I would leak all the information about their design if we no longer had a business relationship. They got quite nasty towards the last. I ended up telling them that they were so offensive I no longer wanted to work with them even when our shop calendar was open again. They have no cause to be that way. I met all my obligations to them.”

“Earth Think,” Jeff said simply. “They will seek partners that they can supposedly control inside their own legal system, instead of simply trust.”

“I don’t like a blanket saying like Earth Think. I like to judge people as individuals,” Dave said. “But at some point you do have to notice traits held in common,” he added, very unhappily.

“Did you suggest there are a number of other small shops they could deal with. Some trained by you?” Jeff asked.

“I did, and he seemed to think that was insane. I explained we all send work around when we’re too busy and some fellows have specialties at which they are better. I don’t think that made a dent on his world view. All he can see is that they are competitors,” Dave said. “It’s a lot different than Earth because we’re all running behind with as much business as we could want. We’re not all scrambling to get a little slice of the pie. “I’ll be honest. If any of the guys who went into business out of my shop ask me whether Weir’s partners were OK to work with I’m going to tell them how easily they assumed I’d do them dirty.”

“They probably can’t imagine you frankly consulting with each other like that either,” Jeff said. “Fierce competitors are naturally secretive and won’t share honest advice. Well, there’s one good thing. When we do get our ship built it will be obvious it is different than Weir’s. He can’t possibly accuse you of having leaked the design elements, because it won’t look anything like his did with those open reactors.”

“Yeah, those were pretty neat looking though,” Dave admitted. “You know, if they don’t use any Home companies, there just aren’t a lot of other space based builders. And the ground based ones they are usually government contractors first, and hard to get a slot in their calendar for private work.”

“That’s fine,” Jeff said. “It gives us a little more time and I don’t want to rush this. Not only will I refuse to fly it if it’s risky, I don’t want to kill some idiot. Even if he volunteers.”

“If you kill an idiot you’ll almost certainly lose the ship too,” Dave reminded him.

“Yes, and we can ill afford that,” Jeff agreed.

Chapter 23

April got a call on com. It was a double buzz, so not the half dozen she’d stop to open no matter what, but still one of a dozen and a half who were important to her.

“Can I bring around a proof of the second helmet drawing with your grandpa for your approval?” Lindsey Pennington asked.

“Right now?” April asked, then on thinking about it a little more asked, “Maybe you should be asking him for the approval. It’s basically his memory that it should be checked against.”

“I figured it will be on your wall, but I can see that. Let me put it this way. Would you check it for your satisfaction with it as art, and if it passes that, then we can ask him to judge it for his taste in art and for historic accuracy too.”

“That works,” April agreed. “You don’t want to just send me a file?”

“You’re not going to display it on a screen. I’ll show you a physical copy,” Lindsey insisted.

“OK, there’s nothing really going on I can’t interrupt. Go ahead and come over when you want,” April allowed. Lindsey, April realized, was one of those awkward people who wanted to be closer to you, than you wanted to be to them. It was irritating sometimes. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her, it was simply that they had such a small overlap in their interests and lives that April had no desire to be constantly finding things to do together.

Still, she wanted to stay on good enough terms to do business with the young woman. Her work was superb and if she felt snubbed she probably wouldn’t accept commissions. April made the extra effort to call for a courier to go by the cafeteria and fetch a couple nice desserts for them. Whatever the feature was to go with dinner today. Then she put a kettle on low. Lindsey was a tea drinker instead of coffee.

The dessert beat Lindsey to the door. The courier, Eric Pennington, was actually Lindsey’s brother, but if he knew who was going to enjoy the dessert he didn’t let on. The two didn’t have a lot of overlap in their interests just like she and Lindsey, but he was much younger and didn’t share her artistic talent. When she peeked it was baked apples, still warm, with a cup of caramel sauce to top them.

Lindsey might be a little bit of a pain in the butt, but her work was worth it. April was wowed. Rather than roll the proof up and weigh the corners down on her table Lindsey brought a full sized print on a foam board she could tack on the wall with a sticky blob. April could just see her wrestling that along the crowded corridor and into the elevator. But it was magnificent. April liked it even better than the first drawing. The lighting was more dramatic.

Chuck Fenton was turned the opposite direction from the first drawing, to show the pin-up on the other side of his helmet. Happy had just finished tacking a hull plate in place and still had the torch in his hand. He was full face on to show his own helmet a bit different than the other drawing. There was a plate number and orientation marks handwritten on the corner of the plate with a vacuum marker.

“I got the writing on the plate corner from a historic photo,” Lindsey said, “so I’m sure about that. The scooter in the background is accurate to within a few months. I don’t think they changed the working models fast enough to make it out of period.”

April was impressed she rendered the scooter from the rear with all the complex piping of the engine in full view instead of the relatively simple cab. She told Lindsey so.

“Oh, that end is much more interesting,” she gushed. “I got really interested and had to find the engineering drawing files and find out what all those tubes and shapes did.”

That actually impressed April even more. She excused herself to get them tea. She preferred coffee, but would drink tea with Lindsey. When it was made strong, the way Lindsey liked it, it wasn’t half bad. April didn’t ask if she wanted dessert, just heated it briefly and put it in front of her so she couldn’t politely decline. She also had a squeeze bottle of honey kept just for Lindsey. She wondered if the girl had any idea what it cost now?

Lindsey mentioned she’d tried to find Happy in the com directory and he had no listing. When April offered to forward a file she wondered why she couldn’t show the art to Happy? She teased and asked if he was becoming a hermit? It was a perfectly reasonable question, but April hated to reveal he was on his way to Mars. She wasn’t sure why, it wasn’t a secret, so April reluctantly admitted he was away from Home for an extended period.

But Lindsey persisted and asked a series of questions that reminded April why she hesitated to let Lindsey get a foot in the door. She was really nosy. It would have offended April to be reminded how many people felt the same about her. Pretty soon April was sure she was fishing for material for her big history book project too. That seemed like a good idea, in theory. In reality April didn’t want a lot of the stupid things she’d done to be public knowledge, and recorded for posterity, until she was safely dead. A long time in the future she hoped.

Once Lindsey finished her baked apple, eating the core and wastefully leaving the pastry, she took her sweet time with a second cup of tea. When she showed signs of slowing down April pleaded mostly fictitious work to wrap it up and see her out the door. She realized then Lindsey had left the proof print. She hadn’t explicitly said that was April’s until the original came, but April wasn’t about to call and try to catch her still nearby to ask about it. It would just give her an excuse to come back.

April poured the last of the tea and got over a half cup, leaned back and regarded the print on the wall. She decided it was so nice, it was well worth straining to be briefly gracious.

*

“The Chariot will dock again in four days,” Jeff told April. “I’m not making anybody happy, but I insisted we have the use of her for five days. The drone is refitted with a navigational camera, better software and a much more powerful pulse generating radio. We’re going to find out how it does with small progressive increases in field intensity, and we’re going to point it at a few distant masses like Saturn and Neptune. Also we intend to find out what happens when it is aimed slightly off dead on to a large mass.”

“Are you aiming it at the mass, or where the light from it says it is?” April asked.

Jeff looked a little surprised. “Planets go slower the further they are from the sun. Even at a few light hours I doubt we are that far off the center of mass to just aim optically.”

“Could be,” April agreed. “It was just something that popped into my head.”

“But you raise an interesting question for stars,” Jeff said. “They are much further away, but some of them have relatively high velocities. I’ll have to calculate their motion over years, and how far you need to lead them for their current position.”

“You guys go ahead. I don’t think I’d find that sort of detail work interesting, and I don’t think I’d have much to contribute,” April said.

“But who will make coffee and serve sandwiches?” Jeff asked.

April said nothing, just started pecking away at her pad.

“What are you doing?” Jeff asked.

“I’m looking for the video I took when you had too much to drink and couldn’t get your pad out of your pocket because you pulled your pants on backwards.”

“OK, it was a snarky thing to say but totally meant in jest. If you post that to the gossip boards it will just humiliate me.”

“I wasn’t going to post it to the gossip boards,” April assured him.

“Oh good, thank you.”

“I thought it would go on a humor site much better. You were tottering a little and looked so befuddled when your hand couldn’t find the opening. It was really cute.”

“You’re going to make me grovel aren’t you?” Jeff realized.

“No, just make amends,” April said. “Wholeheartedly.”

*

The second file caught up with Happy and he spent some time examining it in his cabin. He had a fairly good sized screen and sat on his bunk looking at it. As far as he could remember it was accurate. After a few years, things like when a particular welding torch hand-piece changed models sort of blurred together.

If anything was not absolutely true she got the feel of it dead on. The pose was believable and the lighting true to life. Most artists couldn’t get the stark contrasts and sharp shadows right. The colors were true too, both the helmets and construction materials.

After texting his approval he had to decide which to leave on the screen. He liked them both. After going back and forth between them a few times he finally decided to just have it switch them every night while he slept.

*

“Barak sent a text while you were doing trials,” April told Jeff. “He knew you weren’t here but said to share it when you got back.”

“Well yeah, he lives with my pilot, so he’d know,” Jeff agreed.

“He apologized for not getting back to us. He said the next day Mo sent him a text and begged him to cut short his stay if he wasn’t needed any more. Did you tell Mo he was sneaking a few days off in while he had the chance?” April asked.

“Not exactly. I didn’t call Mo up and volunteer it, to spoil his break. Mo tracked me down and wanted to verify if I was done with Barak for now, because he wanted him back. I wasn’t going to lie and say I still needed him,” Jeff said. He scrunched up his nose and had a sudden thought. “Mo called me late the next day, so I have no idea how long Barak intended to stay.”

“I see. I guess he forgot all about breakfast at the very least. I certainly wouldn’t expect you to lie to Mo for Barak. Down that road is trouble for both of you,” April said. “I guess the constant work with little break was getting to Barak, but leaving Mo shorthanded was irresponsible. I think we just have to accept that Barak is still a bit immature and we better allow for the possibility he’ll be that way when we use him.”

That conclusion surprised Jeff so much he didn’t know how to react. April condemned what Barak did without rejecting him totally. Her flexibility never failed to amaze him. He had to think fast to be as gracious, because he didn’t want to compete with Barak. There was certainly trouble for both of them down that road too. He even needed Barak as an asset.

“When he had to, on the Yuki-onna, he rose to the occasion,” Jeff reminded her. “It was a life or death situation. But it doesn’t surprise me he has a hard time maintaining the same urgency day after day on the moon. It can’t possibly feel so urgent after some time.”

“So you’d still consider him for crew?” April asked.

“Unless you somehow envision him not staying focused in that environment, yes.”

April didn’t answer quickly. “No,” she answered after a pause. “I think he would be better on a ship. It’s very structured. Not constantly changing like working for Mo, getting bounced from this to that and loaned out to other bosses. But we need to watch him,” April concluded.

“We have time to do that before the Hringhorni launches,” Jeff said.

“Ah, you do love your mythology,” April said.

“That’s the name I’m considering right now. Better than the Pedro Escobar.”

“Far less political, fictional and safely in the past, to not irritate people,” April agreed.

*

Happy was spending more time than necessary, more time than he really wanted to in his cabin. He was just tired of his two shipmates finding thin excuses to start a conversation, and then steer it around to politics. They didn’t use that word, but that’s what it amounted to.

The last time he’d been cornered by the fellow with the military faction the fellow had intimated he should identify with them, which he took to mean join-up, because the people in the construction gang were heavily ex-military. He branded it a matter of safety to be surrounded by your allies.

Maybe he took it wrong, but it sounded like a veiled threat. Happy dug out his duffle from the bottom of his locker and took his spare computer from the bottom of the stuff he hadn’t unpacked to use every day. He lifted the screen and powered it up. Inside the case it did have a small computer, but not as powerful as usually fit in a full sized unit with a hinged screen.

It also had two passwords. One to start the computer operating and another that unlocked the keyboard so it could be raised. Happy entered the second password, raised the keyboard and looked at the interior to reassure himself nobody had been into it.

The functioning computer occupied a quarter of the inside to the left and back corner. The other L shaped space had a foam liner and the lightest current model of laser pistol Singh Industries sold. There was even room for a very thin light holster. This was the fourth one he’d owned, April always got him an upgrade when they brought out a new model.

Happy didn’t put it out under his pillow, though he considered it. He just brought it up to the top of all the stuff in the bag where it was accessible. He left the top opening loose, not cinching the draw cord or closing the seal beneath it. On second thought he took it back out of the bag, relocked it, and enter the password again except for the last symbol. That way he could open it and press one key to retrieve it. He didn’t think he’d need it, but he didn’t get old and experienced working in lethal vacuum by failing to provide for every contingency.

*

“We’ll refine it I’m sure, but we have a rough map of how low strength gravitational modulations produce micro-jumps,” Jeff said. “Enough so we can navigate around the solar system without materializing in the core of Jupiter.”

“I’m not sure that would do Jupiter any good either,” April said.

“Jupiter is huge,” Jeff said, shaking his head no. “I doubt it would even produce the Jovian equivalent of an earthquake. But it would certainly ruin your day. We did get a longer jump when aimed at Saturn. I was afraid to try it with Jupiter. But we got some good data aiming to miss Jupiter. The jump does curve to follow the shape of space and come out offset towards any big mass. I have a rough model to put in the computer, but you don’t want to try to use it to jump so you emerge on an atmosphere grazing tangent. It’s far from that accurate yet.”

“I have something I want you to do then,” April said right away.

“Certainly, if I can,” Jeff offered.

“You can run to the outer system so much easier with this tech. I want you to design some small drive units you can grapple on an asteroid and nudge it back towards the moon. It doesn’t have to get here quickly, because nobody will be riding it. We should pick fairly small rocks that won’t be seen by the sky watch until we are ready to run out and finish guiding them in. You can put a transponder on them coded to just our ping to activate them. In three or four years as they start coming in range we’ll make some decent money grabbing them and selling the materials.”

“That would work,” Jeff said. “It would make missions like Barak did, going out and riding huge rocks or snowballs back, obsolete.” He stopped and had that deep thoughtful look he got occasionally.

“Having second thoughts on it?” April asked.

“Not second thoughts, different thoughts,” Jeff said, scrunching up his eyebrows.

“How small would something need to be, and how close, to be caught up in the field and dragged along with the ship? I mean bring the whole thing back instead of just starting it coming back slowly. How much mass and how big a volume can be made to jump? Some of these asteroids are little more than a gravel pile. If you subject them to tidal forces they’ll fall apart. It’s complicated. I’ll have to think on it a bit before I’d even have any idea how to test it. And we want to be sure we can control them. If we brought a rock into the Earth-Moon system and accidently dropped it on Earth they would be rightly peeved.”

“Any way to make your field bigger or shaped differently near the ship?” April asked.

Yeah… I can think of one way, but I’d need a lot more of my Mum’s fluid,” Jeff said. “That goes on the someday list. Right now I just want to swap the drive back to the framework I can grapple on the Chariot again, not start altering it.”

“If you are going to keep switching it back and forth you should have Dave put on a manually operated grapple and a post on the drone, so it’s not such a big deal to swap them out,” April said.

“We could do that, but it would have to be a non-standard very low mass grapple post.” Jeff said. “You know, you’re very practical.”

“That’s not grammatical, but I take your meaning. Thank you.”

Chapter 24

Jonathan was sitting by the stove, sharpening his ax. It was warm now, almost too warm, because he’d been able to cut some limbs and deadfall finally to feed the stove extravagantly. The snow was receding around the chalet and the slope behind them. It was still deep in the shadows and on the north side of the hill across from them.

In the last three days he’d felled seven trees and trimmed the limbs from two of them. Six of them he got to fall pretty much up-slope and he hoped to drag them down most of the way to the cabin with a cable and a come-along. The one that didn’t fall right was slotted between standing timber, and he might just leave it for now until warm weather and cut it up in place.

The ragged snarl of the vuvuzela actually made him jump, but then smile. He still looked downhill carefully with the binoculars from further back in the living room, not showing himself at the window. There were three horses down at the bottom of their meadow, it would never be a lawn again he suspected. He’d emptied an old washtub that had been used as a flower pot, but the bottom was rusted through so he hung it as a gong. However, Victor Foy was smart to use the horn. That told him they had visitors and who.

Jonathan was concerned with the size of the party until he looked closer. The second horse held a thin man with a beard. But the third horse held a woman and young girl, which helped him relax. Then with a start he focused the binoculars with extra care. It was their daughter.

Looking back at the bearded man he decided that it could be his son-in-law. But bearded and forty of fifty pounds lighter he sure looked different. The fellow had already started on a middle aged paunch early the last time he’d seen him. He had a pistol stuck in his pants on one side and a pair of bulky tan gloves on the other. Jon doubted he’d ever touched a pistol before the day, and he was too dainty back then to do anything that needed gloves. Both horses had some baggage lashed on across their rump , and when his horse got nervous and side stepped a little Jon saw the thin man had a small backpack.

“It’s Cindy,” Jon confirmed to his wife Jenny who’d joined him in the living room. “I think it’d be safe to walk down with me if you want.”

“Why don’t you just wave them to come on up?” Jenny asked.

“Sure, that makes sense,” Jonathan said, embarrassed he’d grow so cautious.

Victor might have been of a like mind, because he had Cindy, with their daughter Eileen sitting in front of her, lead the way up the gentle slope to the chalet. They tied the horses up on the porch railing and Vic took the precaution of hobbling them in case they pulled that loose.

Jenny hugged the woman and girl, too overcome with emotion to speak.

“There’s hot water on the stove if you’d like a cup to warm you up,” Jonathan offered. “We don’t have any coffee or tea left.”

“I doubt if anybody in the county does,” Victor said.

“No, we saved something for this special occasion,” Barney the bearded son-in-law said. He held out small plastic jar of instant coffee.

“Are you sure?” Victor asked. “That might buy you a set of digging tools or a saw or even a calf or chickens when we start trading in the summer.”

Jonathan looked concerned, and then agreed. “The man’s right. As much as I’d love to have a cup, save it to trade to some rich person later on.”

Barney laughed. “Our definition of rich has changed, hasn’t it?”

“Just so you know. The other horses are borrowed from neighbors,” Vic said. “They’d be owed if something happened to them. I’m not personally that rich.”

“I can understand that,” Jon said. “I’m just upset I don’t have anything to feed them.”

“I have a little feed in my bags,” Victor said. “That will do for a day if we can water them.”

“Come in then. Sit and tell us what happened. It’s cramped in the kitchen, but warm. We haven’t used the big room in months and even if we fired the stove up it would take forever to get the chill off of it.”

“You have no idea how cramped we’ve been,” Cindy said. “This is luxury.”

“How are you for food?” Barney asked. “If there’s no way to feed us we’ll turn around and go back down to the flat lands. It’s hard there but the snow is gone and there will be things growing to forage there before up here.”

Jenny put mugs before them and poured steaming water.

“It’s going to be lean,” Jon admitted. “But we can use the help. We can fish nearby soon, and if you can’t, I can hunt. We need the help to get wood in for next winter and to get a garden in. Unless you can get food to bring back. Is there any place left to loot?” he asked bluntly.

“Not that isn’t worth your life to try,” Barney admitted. “If Vic here rode down there he’d be dead and they’d eat his horse right quickly. They got no better sense at long range planning than to see it as meat on the hoof.”

“When did they ever?” Jonathan asked. Everybody nodded.

“Eventually it will be safe to venture back to salvage things in a group, in force. The population is much smaller already, but I’m talking in a couple years,” Barney said.

“And yet you walked through it,” Jon said. He was frankly amazed. He didn’t think Barney had it in him, or that they’d ever see any of them again.

Barney looked embarrassed. “We owe surviving the winter to Eileen,” he admitted.

“That’s… interesting. Want to tell the story?” Jon asked.

“We drove north until we ran out of gas. Everybody was going east or south, so it wasn’t too bad. We had to run off on the shoulder for a few just flying south on the wrong side, but we could see them coming. Then we saw smoke from a huge fire ahead on the expressway and got off. We never did learn what that was about, but it was bad enough traffic on the other side started dwindling. We figured it looked big enough to block both sides.

“After we got off on a two lane state route we got around the fire. I’m glad you had Cindy keep real maps, because I always just used the in dash screen that wasn’t working. It looked like it had grown as we went around. By then we figured it was a forest fire too, not just a big wreck, but we got well north past it. By then there was little traffic on the back road. Probably, folks there wanted to stay put. When we ran out of gas it was night and we pulled over well off the road and turned the lights off. There wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere.

“In the morning we sorted out what we could carry. We tried to take way too much. It’s amazing how steep and long a hill can be that was nothing in the car. We walked and walked and had one man pass us the other way in a pickup truck late in the morning. He looked scared to death of us and sped up going past. There were signs saying it was a national forest, and here were a few roads off the state route but no houses right on the main road. We did see a sign for a store and gas station that said thirty eight miles ahead. We had real doubts we could walk all the way here before you were snowed in, but where else did we have to go?

“Did you get that far? To the store and station?” Jenny asked.

“Early this spring, yeah. It was empty and stripped out, door hanging open. But nobody burned it. That seemed to be more common as we kept hiking. I have no idea what satisfaction people get from it.”

Vic cleared his throat. “Along the main road it might be done to keep folks like you from stopping and squatting. Then those folks can be a hazard to travel past. They may decide they’re going to demand tolls from travelers.”

“I suppose,” Barney agreed. “There was nothing else around there to stop for and we kept moving. But we stopped and wintered over well before the store. We were on a long downhill when Eileen called to me. When I stopped she was back uphill maybe fifty feet and I really didn’t want to walk back uphill but she insisted. When I went back she pointed back up hill.”

“Somebody ran over one of those steel posts with the reflector back there,” she said, pointing. “Then look at the guard rail ahead. They clipped the outside of it right where it starts. You can still see the tire ruts cut in the gravel.”

“You’re right,” I told her, “it looks like a big truck. That’s from dual wheels, not separate tracks from front and back.”

“But there’s no other marks like anybody ever came to pull it back up,” Eileen said.

“The road turned left around the hill there, and the hill side below the rail slopped down for maybe a hundred meters and then dropped off sharply again. I told Eileen that if anybody was down there they either survived and climbed back up, or there wasn’t much we could do to help them. They likely went off three days back and there wasn’t any rescue squads now. If there was somebody hurt so bad he couldn’t climb back up, how would we transport them, and where? We had nothing to even get them back up to the road.”

“Well, I thought she was being kind and worried about others, but then she said what should have been obvious to me if I’d been thinking. “But if there’s a whole big truck down there?” he quoted, “What’s in it?”

“That was a different matter. I had the women sit down below the guard rail, out of sight and climbed down carefully. When I got to where it dropped off you could see there was a ravine started there and got deeper as it went down. Then down below it joined another bigger notch in the hillside and turned abruptly right, downhill.

“Well, obviously a long truck careening down a narrow gully wasn’t going to turn sharply. I couldn’t see anything but the back doors of the trailer, but the cab up front had to be crushed into the other bank of the big ravine. The trailer was laying half way on its side in the groove and clear from up there you could see it was bent out of square. It hit hard.

“Where the truck went off was too steep to climb down, but I went back to the women and described what I saw. We all agreed I’d go down-slope from where we were and work my way around the hill to the truck. I didn’t have an ax, just a hatchet, and hoped that was enough to see what was inside. It took me too long to get down there and bust the seal off the trailer door to make it back up by dark, but we’d already figured that, so they weren’t worried.

“The top of the trailer was translucent fiberglass so when I climbed in you could see good enough when your eyes adjusted. Everything was a jumble to one side and I had to crawl over it to get an idea what we had there. It was a Bradley’s Discount truck for one of their big stores. It had a bit of everything, clothing, shoes, housewares, food and even drug store items. But lots and lots of it. There was no telling what else until you started digging in it.

“The truck, the tractor that is, was smashed as bad as I suspected. The driver dead and no way to get him out without cutting tools. He was hard to even see it was so squashed. It was a diesel and the tank under you couldn’t see, but I didn’t smell any fuel and the top tank wasn’t leaking. I figured if it was going to burn it would have by then.

“Next morning I climbed back up and told them what I found. We decided we’d go down and shelter there until spring and have a lot more time and better conditions to make it up here. Cindy is practical, and she said by then there’s be a lot less folks wandering around to cause trouble. We bent the road marker back up straight and scuffed out the edges of the tracks on the shoulder the best we could with our feet, hoping to keep anyone else from noticing.”

Eileen spoke up. “There was water in the bigger ravine, just a trickle the day we got there, but it increased through the winter, except a few times it froze. By then we’d damned it up some above the truck, about as big as a hot tub, and could bust a hole to get water.”

Barney nodded agreement. “We couldn’t have stayed there without that little stream. We spent a bit more than three months there and were busy every day. It took near the full time to empty the trailer out. Some of the things we could have used at the start we just didn’t dig out until the end. We built a privy over the stream downhill from the truck. Towards the end we cut our way through the back of the tractor and got in the driver’s stuff in the sleeper cab. That’s where we got the pistol and half a box of ammunition. Also a can opener. I can’t tell you how much we’d have liked that earlier. There was lots of canned food but we had to cut them open.

“There was gardening stuff including shovels we found early, and we dug a notch in the side of the ravine behind the trailer. That’s where we slept after we floored it with plywood from the uphill inside of the trailer. We made sleeping pads out of stuff like baby clothes and cardboard that wasn’t of any other use. We made up a stove of sorts notched in the hill side of the shelter. The chimney was a roll of sheet metal from the trailer and the sides were the fronts off a couple dishwashers. There were a couple nonstick grills that we broke the electric part off and laid across the tops of the dish washer veneers to make a top.”

“It leaked smoke a little when the wind blew wrong, but it worked,” Eileen said. “We used the dead limbs off the bottom of trees to burn and anything from the truck that would burn once we got it hot enough. I remember one night I burned a whole bunch of high heeled shoes. We kept the fire small and clean in the day though. We were scared to make enough smoke to be seen and somebody would find us.”

“There wasn’t any bakery items,” Barney said, “nor any prescription drugs. I figure the drugs get sent in a small truck for security, and Bradley’s always had an in-store bakery. But lots of other stuff. There wasn’t any bread, but there was fancy party crackers and peanut butter. More spaghetti than you ever wanted to have to eat, and salsa. No regular sauce to go with the spaghetti, but salsa works when you are hungry, and canned nacho cheese. That worked pretty well too. One big skid of flour, shrink wrapped but nothing to make it rise, so we made natural sourdough. And if I never see canned beets again that’s fine with me.”

“There were two cases of those little Vienna sausages,” Eileen said. “I was sorry when those were gone. There was over the counter cold medicines and stuff like bras and reading glasses were pretty much a waste, but there were decorative candles and socks. The socks were worth their weight in gold. There was a two wheel hand cart by the back doors too. When we left there we used it to bring a few things along, although it took us a couple days to carry the cart and the stuff we piled on it up to the road. We pushed and pulled it for three weeks on the way here, until we used up everything on it except some trade goods.”

“What did you find worth keeping and carrying for trade goods?” Jonathan asked.

“We had to leave so much, and it’s too far back to go transport the heavy stuff,” Barney said, wistfully. “Cindy and Eileen picked the stuff to keep. I’d have left it all but they insisted they would carry it if I wouldn’t.”

“We brought a big box of Imodium diarrhea pills in blister packs,” Cindy said. “We tossed all the boxes and Eileen sat and trimmed all the cards smaller with scissors until they were as light as possible and put them in a bag. There was a box of sewing needles and they got the same treatment to make them lighter. They’re on cards with a top and bottom fold over and the flaps got trimmed. And there was a huge box of disposable lighters, but we took about a hundred out of their packages and packed them tight, standing up in a box. That’s all we brought and it might not sound like much, but it was tempting to dump them along the way.”

“They gave me a pack of sewing needles and two lighters for keeping them a couple days until we could get the horses from neighbors and bring them up here. I figured it for a pretty good deal,” Vic told his hosts. That was good. Jon wondered if he owed him for the trouble.

“You can talk to Jon here about it,” Vic told them, “but we’re going to have a local business directory about this time next year if you have skills or goods besides the needles and lighters you want to offer.”

“Is it safe?” Cindy asked Jon.

“We’re going to be listed as agricultural advisors. Vic convinced me he can vet the recipients. If we’re going to do any trading with neighbors we can’t just hole up.”

“There will also be some kind of fair and trade gathering in the fall,” Victor said. “That’s not organized yet, but we’ll be asking people when they want it. If people know you have stuff they want, they’ll come prepared to try to trade for it. If it feels safer, I can just say your stuff will be available there if you decide to, without putting you on a map.

“I’m going to go feed the horses. I have a couple pounds for each, and let them drink their fill and start back. I thank you for the hot drink, Ma’am.”

‘I’ll get a bucket and help you water them,” Jenny said, and they went out.

“We marked where the wreck is on our map,” Barney said after Vic was gone. “I know we may not get back this year, but it would be worth the trip in a year or two, even if we have to go the back trails and such.”

We have a rifle and a shotgun,” Jon said, “not much, but some protection. At least from bear and coyotes if not well armed people. I expect all the animals to recover and grow bold with the human population way down. I was surprised to see you with a pistol,” he said, looking and nodding his head at it. “Have you ever actually shot it?”

“No, I gave it to Cindy, because you taught her to shoot. We decided the noise might attract attention to even show me how once. She carried it until we got to Vic’s and insisted I take it. Maybe to save my tender male pride,” Barney said.

“What’s still there worth the trip and danger?” Jonathan asked.

“There is a case of dish soap, too heavy to carry. Cindy tells me soap is hard to make and takes valuable fat. There were about a dozen bicycles boxed up in the front, unassembled, but we opened one and there weren’t any tools to assemble it. We need some tools, I have a copy of the assembly instructions that name the sizes. If we assemble some bikes we can use them to transport stuff. Hang it on the bike and walk it. We also figure there are probably tools and other stuff still in the cab. It was just too nasty to go all the way in there, but by the time we go back the driver will be bones and it won’t reek.”

“The bikes would be valuable,” Jon agreed, “since we don’t have horses. They’re probably going to be too dear to buy for a good long while too.”

Then there’s something you might not need right now,” Barney said, “but will be craving by next year. There was an entire pallet of salt onboard.”

“If any of it’s still there,” Jonathan worried.

Barney shrugged. “We smeared mud on the back doors and leaned cut saplings against it. You have to know what you are looking for to see it from the drop-off, not at all from the road. Unless somebody sees the end of the guard rail and figures it out they have no reason to even go down that far. The guard rail was rusty already when we climbed back up. Pretty hard to tell if it happened three months ago or three years.”

“You could see it from the air,” Jonathan speculated.

“If you have assets like a functioning aircraft, one wrecked semi with unknown contents isn’t going to get you excited. There’s not a straight stretch of road nearby to land a regular plane. Anybody that well equipped is going to go loot the huge warehouse the truck came from. Likely put guards on it and claim it for their own,” Barney said. “I would.”

“Probably the government has secured a lot of those big assets,” Jon said.

“Exactly,” Barney agreed.

“I like how you think,” Jonathan agreed. Odd how things change, he thought. He was never that impressed with his old son-in-law, but this new one was OK.

Chapter 25

“I’ve learned a lot from you about worming out information,” Jeff said.

“Thank you. I think,” April said uncertainly.

“No, really, it’s a good thing,” Jeff insisted. “I went back and am reading all my mother’s old papers until she stopped publishing. I can often see how a person came to a conclusion even if I’d never follow that mental path myself.”

“And did it let you reproduce her fluid?” April asked, knowing that the ultimate goal.

“No, it hasn’t, but I tried a combination of metals using some of the same techniques she pioneered, that I thought likely. It made an alloy that displays some unusual properties, but isn’t fluid and doesn’t do the same trick of concentrating the gravitational flux as hers. Trouble is she told us she discovered the really useful liquid alloy as a mistake. I can only get so close by knowing what she was working on, but knowing her thinking can’t help me repeat a mistake.”

“Will it be useful?” April asked.

“Oh yes, but it’s going to take some thought and experimentation,” Jeff said.

“Well good. I’m glad it wasn’t time entirely wasted,” April said.

*

The supposed director of the physical Mars colony, not the research community head, was Albert Schober, an Austrian. Happy wasn’t entirely surprised when he was given an appointment to meet the man. He’d have called and requested an interview in time if he didn’t meet the man socially. With only a bit more than two hundred permanent residents he did expect to get to know him. Honestly, he might reasonably get to meet everyone in such a small group. But there was two levels of administration between them. To have a meeting set on his screen before he even met his own boss did surprise him.

When he was shown in it was immediately a bad start. Schober was grinning like a maniac, or worse, a natural politician. Happy immediately didn’t trust him. The man had no reason to be that pleased to see him yet. Then the man started reciting Happy’s history. At a certain point he felt the object was no longer praise but intimidation, the point to be made that there could be no secrets from him, back to Happy’s fifth grade spelling skills if need be.

That Schober had opinions was soon apparent. He shared them freely, but then had the unfortunate habit, for a supervisor, of asking if Happy didn’t agree? Rather than disagree, Happy’s answer was that if it didn’t pertain to his work, he’d stick to job related issues both up and down the line of command. That wasn’t sufficient to please Schober. This interview was not honestly about work. At least the fake smile was gone by the time he left.

Well shit… Happy thought, going out the door. That went bad.

*

Jeff was gone for three days with Dionysus’ Chariot. Their own people were getting suspicious that something unusual was going on. He kept requiring the use of the ship for mysterious errands whenever it wasn’t making freight runs. More than ever before. When he returned from the latest trials he was satisfied, and promised to try not to take the ship again before they had a dedicated vessel for the star drive.

“We can navigate around a star system very rapidly now. We’re not constrained by the need to build up velocity and shed it like the electric model drive. We also determined we can jump while under acceleration. As far as we can measure it doesn’t change a thing. It’s frustrating not to use it, but the Chariot is needed, and the Hringhorni will be much more suited to the task.

“A lot of it is now computerized. You can tell the onboard AI where you want to go and it can display a range of likely paths and let you decide the safety margin you wish. As we collect data from actual use the range will become narrower and more accurate.

“We’ll need our own internal licensing standards,” April said. “If we ever make this public I want to be able to show we were consistent and responsible in who we let pilot.”

“Absolutely,” Jeff agreed. “You can help write the manuals and standards.”

“This changes everything,” April said.

“It will, when it becomes public,” Jeff said. “I did a lot more thinking on that while we were doing trials.

“What were your conclusions?” April asked, hoping he’d move along to a summary.

“If we turn this tech loose right now we’ll be swamped with a wave of people from Earth to every corner of the Solar system and beyond. Most will be under the control of Earth governments. They’ll bring all their conflicts right along with them. I can see interstellar war as a real possibility in a couple generations.

“I’m even more certain I want to hold the tech close as long as possible. It’s not like we’d be denying them the stars. They have the start of a workable system already. We’d just be refusing to help them along faster. I fear faster would be a disaster for us and them too.”

“If we keep it to ourselves, when it becomes known later a lot of people will hate us,” April said. “Are you prepared to deal with that?”

“They already hate us,” Jeff said. “I’m trying to keep them from being everywhere before we have a chance to get there. I want us to be so established and far ahead of them it doesn’t matter if they hate us. Let them tell the herd anything they want, as long as they don’t touch us. The smart ones will figure it out. It’ll help filter who comes to us even.”

“I’m not sure there is a good choice here, but I’ll go along with you,” April promised. “Heather has made clear that’s how she leans already. She’s called the Earthies slavers a few times in my hearing.”

“She has a point, if bluntly made. How many countries can you walk into a spaceport and slap down cash and come to Home or the moon?” Jeff asked. “How is that different from a serf who couldn’t leave the estate?”

April sighed. “The hovels have gotten nicer, most places. Heather rules her own dominion absolutely. That still bothers me some times.”

“She knows it too,” Jeff said. “Sometimes it just isn’t possible to be nice. People won’t let you, no matter how hard you try.”

“Like Vandenberg,” April said, tight lipped.

“You could have let them shoot me,” Jeff allowed.

“You don’t sound sincere,” April accused.

“I wasn’t even trying.”

*

Victor showed up again in a couple weeks, working on extending his survey for the promised map of the area. They let him sleep by the stove, before he went beyond them. He brought his own food and insisted on giving them a small gift of a local herbal tea. He had a deck of cards and they played a game of Rummy before going to bed. Jon and Jenny had played cards before, but it was a new thing to the others.

“I thought he was going to have one of his adopted boys ride out mapping,” Jon said, after he left in the morning.

“They are ten and twelve,” Jenny said looking at him funny. “The twelve year old hasn’t got the sense to be trusted alone yet he told me, and certainly not to risk a horse to his keeping. Maybe next year he said, maybe not.”

“Well that was more pleasant than having his kid in any case,” Jon said.

“Men… “Jenny said, tight lipped, “miss the obvious.”

“What?” Jon asked, wondering what he’d done.

“Are you aware Victor is single?” Jenny asked.

“Well no. He mentioned his family, but not a wife. I sort of assumed… “

“You assumed too much. You watch, Mr. Foy will find reason to pass through here every few months. He has his eye on Eileen. He was very impressed with how she found a safe hidey hole for them and survived just fine. She’s smart too. Did you see how fast she learned the card game?” Jenny asked.

“Eileen is much too young,” Jon said indignantly. “And he’s too old for her.”

“I’m sure he’s aware she’s barely fourteen. She’ll be sixteen so fast you’ll wonder how it happened, and he just made sure she’ll know him before she meets any of the other young men at this fall fair thing. Things have changed if you haven’t noticed. In rougher times people marry younger and for different more practical reasons. We don’t have any history books, but you had an education,” Jenny said, sharply. “Remember Shakespeare if not the history texts. Kids marry earlier in an agricultural society. We’ve reverted,” Jenny assured him.

“He’d still be too old,” Jon objected.

“Do you really want to marry her off to some green kid barely older than her? Somebody with no assets and fewer skills? It’s a rough dangerous world out there again. There’s no phone with police and fire on the other end. But I think the kicker is she’ll probably look at a couple seventeen or eighteen year olds at the fairs and see they look like boys beside Vic. And of course Barney and Cindy will weigh in. There may be other mature competition too,” Jenny speculated, “but the days of TV style romance between high school sweethearts are gone for a long time I’m afraid.”

Jon scowled and didn’t argue. She was probably right, but he didn’t like it.

*

Happy was tickled to get outside and tour a construction site. He intended to requisition a rover out at the site and go beyond the work zone far enough to get a feel for the planet. He knew there wasn’t any area within a hundred kilometers of the colony that was true wilderness. It was all surveyed from the air and known down to any stone thirty millimeters across, if you wanted to search the high definition photos. But you could turn off a track and go to where you couldn’t see any other rover tracks still easily enough. He’d be satisfied with that.

The supply people hadn’t been immediately helpful. They had questioned whether he needed an assigned suit and suggested he might not get outside enough to warrant that and should use one of the community suits. He asked the young man if he personally used community underwear. The fellow boggled at him a moment and stopped arguing. Then he was dismayed to see they stored the suits in lockers without individual locks. He intended to ask the workers how they felt about that, and how long it had been going on.

He had to requisition a lock and they tried to give him one with a set number the user couldn’t randomize. The irritated stock jockey asked him if Happy didn’t trust him?

“Not worth a damn, nor your security, nor everybody in however big a mob has access to all your data including this lock number,” Happy answered truthfully. “And… I’m your new boss,” he informed the fellow with his best intimidating gaze. He got his lock and reset the number.

He’d gone to the dressing room and found his suit and locked it in his assigned locker. That was yesterday. Today he’d come early so he could do a thorough suit inspection before riding out to the job site in one of three rovers scheduled to go to the site.

The suit design was new to him, but pretty much like a moon suit. There wasn’t enough atmospheric pressure on Mars to matter between here and hard vacuum. The suit was designed for maximum mobility for workers, but special attention to safety in construction work. Happy wouldn’t hesitate to use it with a little extra thought and care on the Martian moons or in orbit, except they probably prohibited that.

It wasn’t a new suit but it had been blown out a couple weeks with ionized air and supposedly inspected. Happy took the helmet off and sniffed. It wasn’t odorless, but it didn’t reek of perfume or garlic or mold. He’d used much worse. The helmet faceplate was diamond coated and didn’t have a scratch. The hinges for the flip down filters were tight. Those got a lot of wear. It had decals on the back of the helmet saying 104. The same numbers were silk screened across the shoulders. They were cracking a bit but good for a couple more years. He toyed with the idea of having ‘Happy’ or ‘Boss’ added below the number. Maybe after people got to know him.

Happy removed the gauntlets and inspected the locking flanges with care. They were unaltered from the factory and he’d leave them that way here. His personal suit he’s sold back on Home had all the flange edges radiused and polished. He did the same inspection with the boots and helmet mating surfaces. He removed the over-boots and inspected the actual pressure holding surface.

The forearms were armored since that was the likely area a worker would cut his own suit open working with power tools. There was a patch like that over the knees and on the front of the thighs. The over-boots could stand being run right over with a rover and protect your toes. All the other areas, especially where it flexed, Happy inspected every square centimeter.

The environmental rack on the back could hold one of three systems. A single bottle of air that lasted about four hours and had high losses from venting, but was very light. They would let somebody use that climbing an antenna tower or a crane. More commonly workers used a dual bottle of oxygen with a carbon dioxide scrubber that could last about twelve hours. The bottles had to be switched manually, but the usual drill was to stop at lunch, switch to your reserve bottle and rack the empty in a cage for those bottles on site. Then you picked up a fresh bottle for a new reserve so you always had a back up.

There were also cryogenic units that had a liquid oxygen reserve and a nanotech carbon dioxide filter. They would last four days of heavy activity, and exploration rovers had a unit on board to recharge them. They required too much maintenance and expense to use for everyday.

His suit had the carbon dioxide absorber installed, but the hose was not screwed down. He could look in the port and the seal film was still intact from the last refurbish. It had two bottles onboard already. The full bottle had an indicator on it that clicked over when you installed it on the active side and connected it to the regulator set. It took a key to reset. But once in the rack you had no pressure gauge to help you estimate how much oxygen remained. The suit clock would give you a running time to empty and a low pressure warning. Happy didn’t like the design, but some efficiency expert had noticed most workers looked at the pressure gauge as much as a hundred times a shift, so they had removed the “distraction”.

Having this obsessive attachment to breathing Happy took the reserve bottle to the refill station and screwed the feed hose on. When he pushed the fill button it informed him the bottle was good and at full pressure. He racked that back in the suit and grabbed the large knurled ring that attached the armored hose from the other bottle to the regulator.

He couldn’t turn it.

While he was old by vacuum worker standards he had both Life Extension Therapy and a gene modification that gave him strength per kilogram that approached what an adult chimpanzee possessed. The knurled ring was not supposed to be tightened or removed with a tool. He tried again with all his strength. It didn’t budge. The fitting could not be cross threaded. It had special threads and a sleeve that kept it from tilting as you tightened it.

There were no flats or slots on the nut. When he looked really closely there two places on the knurled surface, opposite each other, where the sharp points of the knurling had been flattened. Not just worn rounded and not sharp from handling but with a little flat at the point from being gripped. Now, if he’d been trying to kill someone he’s have wrapped the nut in a thin sheet of something grippy like a suit liner to protect the knurling.

Not only was somebody trying to kill him but they were amateurs to leave evidence, he thought with contempt. This sloppy a job would be discovered in the investigation after he couldn’t switch bottles in the field and died. Then he reconsidered. If the killers had controlled the entire investigation and conclusions, why get fancy or worry about it? That scared him.

Happy took out his pad and took pix of the damaged knurls. Then he hung the suit on a service rack and rolled it down to maintenance. He wanted to see the technician’s reaction. He introduced himself as the new construction boss, and shook the young fellow’s hand since he offered it. He introduced himself but had a name tag that said Hoffman. That amused Happy, he decided not to risk insulting the fellow by asking if he knew the origins of the name.

“I have a problem with my suit I want you to address right now,” Happy demanded.

“Yes sir. Let me set this job aside safely and I’ll be with you in just a minute.” He didn’t seem guilty or upset. Happy watched him write on an actual paper sticky sheet where he was with the regulator rebuild job. He slid the sticky pad with the old parts in a zipper bag with a label marking them as old and the plastic bag of new parts that hadn’t been opened, so he was good on procedure there. The whole tray with the job, once documented, was put in a rack. The kid seemed to know his stuff and how to minimize human error.

He got a service request form and turned back to Happy. “What can I do for you?”

“First hold off on the service sheet,” Happy told him. That surprised the tech and he didn’t like it. Happy could see he was C/O at religiously following routine. That was good in his job.

“Who is the department head here for criminal acts? I haven’t met him yet.”

“Director of Safety is Paul Liggett. I have to say sir, we don’t have much in the way of criminal acts. I doubt Director Liggett has had opportunity to wear his cop hat much.”

The fact the kid was trained to use Liggett’s title even when speaking to a third party about him said loads about the culture of the colony to Happy.

“Check out the primary bottle coupling, and you’ll see why I’m asking,” Happy said.

The tech seemed puzzled, as well he might. The item was so simple and robust in design and operation one of lesser experience would be tempted to call it fool-proof. When he couldn’t turn it the tech was outraged. He got a grippy rubber pad such as they sold to open stubborn jars of jam and tried again. The tech just glared at him and didn’t say anything. He got in a tool box with his name on it and got a pair of binocular magnifiers. Examining the knurling he said nothing until he was certain. Happy wondered if he’d have thought to look at that so quickly without the hints he had beforehand.

Hoffman flipped the lenses back over his head and said, “This is sabotage. I can’t call it anything but attempted murder. I see why you want Safety called in.”

“Would you take documentary photos, and then call Mr. Liggett and inform him please? I’m going to call the site foreman and inform him I won’t be visiting the site today.”

“If you would stay just a moment, there’s something else we should check, and I’d much prefer you see me do it,” Hoffman said.

“Alright, I can wait a minute,” Happy agreed.

The tech documented the damage and used the same grippy pad to avoid adding to the damage on the knurling. He tried loosening it with a big pair of adjustable pliers, but couldn’t hold the bottle from turning. Once he had a long strap wrench around the bottle itself he could press the handles together and apply enough force. The fitting made a long high pitched squeak when it let loose. The sort that gave you shivers up your back even if nobody tried to kill you.

“Well crap, I have to scrap this coupling and the valve assembly on the bottle too. Both sides are treated with dry lube for vacuum and they were never designed to be torqued this tight. They may be stretched or cracked. But what I want to check is the fill,” Hoffman said.

He screwed a coupling on the bottle with an old fashioned dial pressure gauge like they all had before they were “improved” and opened the valve. The gauge had a pointer painted on the glass for a full charge. The needle only went to three quarters of that.

“Well, I thought they weren’t that competent to leave marks on the coupling,” Happy said, “but they had the wits to imagine what I would do out on the job site and time it so I’d be alone when I ran out of air.”

“Oxygen,” the tech corrected automatically, “but I’m not sure what you mean. Why did you intend to be alone? That’s generally discouraged outside pressure.”

“I was out here, to Mars, before. Second expedition,” Happy explained. “But I never got down to the surface. It doesn’t even take any imagination to know I wanted to get down here this time. I mentioned it to a number of people as a primary reason for taking the job. I intended to visit the work site, have the site foreman walk me around for a quick show and tell, and take one of the rovers far enough out past the construction to savor being on the surface without any human works around me. I didn’t tell anybody that detail, but it wouldn’t take much knowledge of human nature to figure out that’s what I would do. I didn’t intend to ask somebody to stop working to come babysit me. Bad enough to cop the use of the rover.”

“Nobody says cop for steal anymore,” Hoffman said, “That’s so 2050… but I take your meaning because I watch old movies, even flat ones. They do discourage joy riding, but you have a big enough job title nobody would say anything unless it got to be a habit.”

“Go ahead and report it to Liggett,” Happy said. “I’m going to go make my call and see to some other things today instead of the job site.” Hoffman just nodded agreement.

Chapter 26

Happy went back to his quarters. The gift pistol from the kids was better than the earlier models in a very important way, it was much slimmer. If somebody was trying to kill him it was time to arm up. He removed it from the hiding place inside his computer and stuck the thin holster against his skin on the left tucked in his pants. The inner surface had little micro-grippy shapes like a lizards foot. He had gloves and footies of the same material that would let him climb a wall at a standard G and go across the ceiling here or on the moon.

He put on coffee in his private machine set for two cups and sat looking out the port, trying to think. Should he call April and her partners about this? What could they really do from that distance except document his homicide if they tried to cover it up? That was small comfort. When the coffee maker dinged he got a cup and walked back to the port. Not everybody rated a view. He had the luxury of a meter square port facing east. The sun was direct and hadn’t reached its zenith yet.

When he looked down there was a distinct wet spot on the glass right up against the gasket. Just six or seven millimeters high, but he was particularly observant. Just a little half round place where the surface wasn’t perfectly flat and clear, like an overlay of clear enamel. Not water of course, that would boil off almost instantly outside. He leaned over to make sure it wasn’t a trick of the light or a defect in the glass. It was real. Then he noted it had spread from where liquid was applied and been drawn by capillary action both ways along the seam between the glass and the gasket. The little thin line of rubbery material was darker outside than in. Darker for almost the full width of the bottom now. Capillary action, working as it did, he was sure it would slow down but continue to rise along the seam on each side. How long had it been working? All the while as he slept? When he looked even closer the gasket was swollen slightly at the wet spot, protruding a little extra. Inside it, exactly opposite the outside mark, it was slightly darker and swollen already, a hand’s breadth each way. Not so obvious most people would notice, but lethal in the end.

There were fluids, like certain hydraulic oils, that would eat away at conventional seals and ‘O’ rings, turning them gummy and destroying them. Happy could picture in his mind how this would progress. Tonight or the next night the glass would chill in the Martian night and shrink slightly. The gasket, robbed of its strength and integrity, would creep from the pressure behind it until it popped out of the opening while he slept. The emergency pressure curtain would seal his unit off safely, but nobody could survive such a sudden pressure drop, even if he had an emergency pressure suit laid out ready pull on. Everything loose would swirl out in the sudden gush of air, into the dark and cold, maybe even him.

It was hard not to flee the room knowing it was progressing to a pressure failure, but the window wasn’t ready to pop yet. He forced himself to make a message to April and encrypt it with a onetime pad.

I have had two attempts on my life today. One attempt at suit sabotage and an ongoing act to breach pressure in my residence. The political situation is much worse than I thought. Be aware if I have died it is not by any misadventure, but by homicide. I do not know the present environment as well as the people assaulting me, so chances are good they will succeed given opportunity for enough attempts. I am going to go collect additional information if possible now and will send further reports. Given the overt hostility calling attention to myself with repeated encrypted messages carries little further risk. – Not very Happy today.

Happy considered if there was anything in his room he couldn’t abandon and decided not. The computer would reveal his hiding spot for his pistol, but by the time that was found it wouldn’t matter to him one way or another. Nothing else was an heirloom.

The technician Hoffman seemed a very straight shooter. He headed back there walking slowly to kill time and allow him to think. It would be interesting to see what Hoffman said when he walked in. He’d have reported it by now.

“Hi, Did you file a report in the incident yet?” Happy asked when he walked in.

“No, Director Liggett has taken charge of the matter himself and it’s not a maintenance concern any longer. I’m instructed not to discuss it with anyone, which I interpret to include you too. You can direct any inquiries to the Director himself,” Hoffman said.

Happy noticed there was another fellow sitting at the other bench who didn’t appear to have anything to do. “Ah, I figured something like that,” Happy said. “No problem.”

“You left your music card in the helmet,” Hoffman said, holding it out. “You need to redub it if you are going to use it here. We don’t allow more than sixty decibels output in a work environment to avoid missing emergency calls and instructions.”

“Thank you, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem now, but I got it.”

Happy walked out, noting the other ‘tech’ watched him closely, and turned down the corridor away from his quarters towards the cafeteria. Once there he went in the restroom and staked out a stall to see what was on his music card, since he didn’t have one.

“This is in text because I don’t even dare speak out loud,” Hoffman said in the single file on the card. “I’ve seen some dirty crap here but this is at a new level. They are demanding I falsify records. I’m out of here on the next ship anyway, so I’m going to keep my mouth shut and get home safe. Obviously they will do anything now, and I don’t even have the contacts or friends somebody at your level of supervision must have. I liked you, so watch your butt. I think you are in real – continuing - danger. Please destroy this card, not just erase it.”

Happy would try, but he had far fewer resources than Hoffman thought. He laid the card on the deck in front of the toilet and set his laser pistol on the lowest power. When he held the trigger down a few seconds the plastic of the card shriveled up in a discolored ball. He flushed it in the commode and set the pistol back to a much more lethal setting.

*

Mars was in a favorable orbital position, so it was only six minutes later April’s pad gave the distinct ping that mean it was a priority call. She read Happy’s message and called Jeff.

“The Chariot is in dock now isn’t it?” she demanded.

“Yes, but it’s scheduled to load next shift and do an Earth run.”

“Good! Then it’s serviced and ready to go. How soon can you have your magic module widget aboard and how long to take us to Mars. I mean how many minutes, not hours, sure as hell not days. They’ve tried to kill Happy on Mars and he needs to be rescued.”

“Ah, I should have known it was a rescue. That’s your specialty,” Jeff said.

“I need to call him back and tell him when we can pick him up. I don’t have time for you to get all snarky about my rescue complex. Might I remind you your own little precious butt has been the beneficiary of my rescue complex?”

“You realize this may blow our cover wide open?” Jeff asked.

“Are you seriously suggesting we sacrifice my grandpa, and your friend, on the altar of operational security?”

There was just the tiniest pause as Jeff processed that.

“It has some palleted freight aboard and only one forward pilot seat for an Earth landing. I’ll call right now and they can unload and have two more seats plugged in by the time I get to dock or not much later. We can have the module aboard from our cubic within the hour.

“Go to our cubic and lock the corridor entry for sure. I know you are excited. So slow down and do everything carefully. The module fits through the coffin lock now. Suit up - push it in there and pump it down. After I remove it come through and help me with guiding the module out and grappling it. I’ll do it right there as it takes too much time to put it in the hold and attach it later. I want a ten minute boost to be clear of home before we jump, and depending on how close I manage to jump we can be at either of the Martian moons within two hours. If he needs picked up on the surface that will take longer. Maybe another hour.”

“I’ll tell him, and get a pickup point,” April said, and disconnected.

Will pick you up at either Phobos or Deimos with the Chariot in two hours. If must land on Mars tack on up to an hour more. Don’t waste time to ask for confirmation and explanation. State desired pickup point. – April

She thumbed enter. Now… would he believe her?

Happy looked at the message and blinked. Could he risk his life on this? The don’t ask for any confirmation directive pretty much acknowledged it wasn’t believable. But what better options did he have? He called the shuttle schedule for Phobos up on his pad. They had a lift in twenty minutes and it was a six seat shuttle with three seats open. If he hurried he could make the lift. It was so unexpected he’d probably be in the air before the directors knew.

His title gave him lift rights. He’d made sure that was in his contract. Why would they even think to watch the shuttle manifest? Once he got there where would he go? Even he wasn’t entirely sure where he was going to go…

Will attempt to board Phobos shuttle in fifteen minutes. If successful you may have to loiter for pickup. Transit time of shuttle is almost three hours. If not there I will still be on surface. May even be alive. Call Martian local com #247 or look for me on tarmac if my com service is cut off by then. Thanks. – Happier

“Mr. Lewis has boarded the Phobos shuttle,” Director Liggett told his boss Schober.

Schober looked amused. “Well, he does have transit rights written in his contract. But what do you suppose he hopes to accomplish with this gesture?”

“I have no idea. It seems rather pointless to me too,” Liggett admitted.

“Well, no matter. We shall use the opportunity to have maintenance do a repair on his port. It would be useless and embarrassing for it to fail now. We have lots of time and opportunity to find other methods. On the other hand, if he stays on Phobos for more than two or three days I can terminate his contract with cause and he can be held in the brig up there. That way we don’t even have to deal with him after that. He can just sit and contemplate the walls for six months until he’s hauled back home. He won’t see a penny of his wages either, having been fired. I like that even better as a solution. I can’t imagine anybody would ever hire him again for deep-space work.” The thought made him smile.

“We really need to get somebody in Human Resources on Earth,” Liggett complained. “It’s much too hard dealing with the mixed lot they send us. I really thought Lewis would be manageable, given his background.”

“I’ve been trying almost three years now. The damn Austrians have too many people in that office. We could have dealt with almost any other position by making their life hell, or nudging them aside and limiting their power, so they would go back to Earth at the end of their first tour. Construction Super was just an impossible position to allow somebody not ours to operate on the job for a full tour. He’d have had way too many questions. I could tell he was strong willed too,” Schober said, remembering his interview.

“Fine, should I give the station manager on Phobos any instructions about him?”

“No, give him all the rope he needs to hang himself,” Schober decided. “If he babbles about some insane conspiracy theory we’ll have him discharged as unstable. It works as well.”

Liggett smiled. “I like it. I won’t say a word about his little excursion. If anyone inquires what he is up to I’ll be quite as puzzled by his odd behavior as they are.”

They had a good chuckle together.

*

“Pretend you are trying to move like a video in slow motion,” Jeff advised April. “It was Happy who taught me how to do this. It’s just terrifically easy to stop thinking about it and move like you would under gravity, and boom! You’ve got a pinched finger or piece of equipment dinged because it had more momentum built up than you realized.”

“It’s kind of like the people doing interpretive dance,” April said. “I always thought it was sort of silly, if graceful. That’s how Easy got his name too. From saying it over and over to the guys doing construction, not to get carried away moving trusses and plates.”

Jeff switched boots, the temporary magnetic over-boots giving them a grip on the station hull. You could break the connection loose by reaching down and touching a tab, or rolling your foot on its edge. He had to do the awkward foot movement because he needed both hands on the module.

“You know what else it looks like?” Jeff remembered. “When they do martial arts in slow motion.”

“Like Tai Chi,” April said. “Most people don’t even know there’s a fast form.”

“That’s it. OK, I’m holding it. If you need to reposition so it’s not awkward for you go ahead. Then I’ll have you hold it steady and I’ll get my feet set square to it. Say when.”

“I’ve got my feet set solid and turned just slightly toward the Chariot. Your turn now if you need to reset,” April invited. “Tell me when and we can shove this baby home.”

“Easy, easy.” Jeff repeated. “There I’m set and can push it home. I’m bigger than you so I won’t get carried away and make it go crooked. On three just give it a good firm push. One, and two, and three… “

The pin was only about a hundred millimeters from the grapple and it didn’t go perfectly straight, but it rattled its way down the open ‘U’ of the coupling. They didn’t hear the clunk of it closing like they would have seated inside, but they felt it in their hands.

“And that’s how you do it like a couple pros. We’ll get you a rigger’s card soon,” Jeff said.

“I’m not sure if that’s a promise or a threat,” April said.

“Riggers are always in demand and make good money. I should have made a video of it,” Jeff said. “Happy would be proud.”

“Well like you said, there’s so many video cameras hanging off Home maybe we can get somebody to send us a copy. I sure wouldn’t be showing this to the world if it wasn’t an emergency,” April complained.

“Me either,” Jeff acknowledged. “It’s just I’ve decided if people start asking a bunch of nosy questions and claiming they know stuff I’m just not playing that game. I’ll refuse to confirm or deny as they say. I don’t owe them or care what they think.”

“I have no problem supporting that,” April said. She could see Jeff’s helmet across the module, but the faceplate was a mirror in the sun. “Is this sucker tight?”

“Only way I know to tell, without being inside to see the status light – lets pull on it.”

“On a count? Together?” April asked.

Jeff was already pulling on it, but he didn’t want to admit he’d jumped ahead of her.

“Yeah, on three again. And… a one, and a two, and… three.”

“This baby is solid,” April declared. “Let’s get out of here.”

*

“Home Local, Dionysus’ Chariot, Master Jefferson Singh sitting the controls, asking immediate clearance to remove from dock at the north hub and exit to uncontrolled space.”

“Direct? No loop around the moon today?” Local harassed them. “No destination, no return?” he persisted.

“You’re right,” Jeff told April holding the mute button down. “There are tales circulating.”

“Thank you for your concern, Home Local. No destination declared. No return time can be estimated. We simply want to go out there,” Jeff pleaded. He’s seen line that in an old movie.

“You are clear to maneuver at will, Dionysus’ Chariot. Be safe, out there, pray thee.”

“Tuck your arms in and prepare for acceleration,” Jeff told April. “Engaging acceleration compensation, expect a ramp to fourteen gravities.” He let off the mute button, gave a short burst on the maneuvering thrusters to clear the station and rotated ninety degrees to line up on their course.

“Thank you, Local. Leaving your control area, now,” he affirmed.

The compensators whined as they spun up and the thrust climbed nearly in step to balance out. There was a slight shuddering feeling as they got in and out of sync slightly. They reached fourteen G, and felt about three G felt in the couches, less than three seconds from initiation.

There was a long unprofessional whistle of appreciation at his exit style on the control frequency that Jeff pretended not to hear.

It wasn’t as comfortable as April remembered. The compensators had been improved, but there were still odd gradients from her legs above to her hips, and her head to her chest.

“Jump coming in sixty seconds,” Jeff said after what seemed like too long a time. “We’ll cease acceleration, do some navigation, and set course for Phobos on emerging.”

The weird sensations of mixed weight pull unevenly stopped and Mars was suddenly visible as a disc to one side ahead.

“Not bad,” Jeff decided. “A bit short, but on a good tangent for a first try.”

“We have to accelerate over towards it?” April asked.

“By no means. We just have to coast a little before we decelerate towards it. The computer will help get us in the neighborhood and in the right plane, but docking at Phobos we are going to have to finesse manually until we can get in radar range. Then the navigational computer can deal with it again.”

“How will you do that? Get in radar range that is?” April worried.

“Well they can see the moons from Earth with a really junky telescope. If I can’t acquire them with a Mark IV eyeball we’re in trouble.”

“Oh, still… we do need that better radar,” April reminded him.

“The new alloy I told you about may let us do something about that,” Jeff said. “It seems it will be useful to construct something called a Veselago lens over each element of an array of high power flatennas. Veselago lenses up to now have been more theoretical than practical. They’ve been made as integral emitters similar to an LED, in axial graphene semiconductor diodes, but they have always been very limited in power due to heating.”

“Tell me what it will do,” April insisted.

“Flipping and starting a slow burn,” Jeff interjected before answering.

“If you have enough hull area you can mount a few hundred of these and emit as much power as we have any way to produce in a spacecraft today. The beam can be shaped focused and aimed. Like a synthetic aperture radar, it can do things that simulate a very different shape and size emitter than what is really there, but with even more control. It can focus all of the elements to a common spot approximately one wave length in diameter.”

“You were eventually going to tell me about this?” April asked hopefully.

“Yes, but I’ve been rather busy since your call this morning.”

“I think you just described a beam weapon,” April said.

“Well, if you have a few hundred megawatts of power available, and focus it down to say a one centimeter dot, it might mar the paint job, yeah.”

*

“Mr. Lewis! We didn’t know you were coming to the facility. What can I do for you?” the first shift supervisor asked as he rushed up. Well as fast as anybody can rush up on Phobos. It might have been more convenient to have no gravity than the little they did. The supervisor did an interesting braking maneuver on the line strung across the entry area. There were a lot of lines and grab bars everywhere, but when people were in a hurry they went ballistic.

The man was too flustered to introduce himself.

“Tom… Rapper? Raftner?” Happy struggled to remember.

“Thomas Raber,” the man supplied.

“My apologies,” Happy offered. “I’ve read the bios, but I’m still getting oriented.”

“Is there anything I can show you? Is this some sort of inspection?” he worried.

“I’m expecting a ride. If you might have a suit for me that would be appreciated. I haven’t been here in awhile. It was two moon huts, last time I was here,” Happy said, looking around.

“Are you going to use a hopper?” Raber asked. “That’s how most people move around Phobos. We have two of them. They’re double saddle open craft. I understand they’re tricky, so I’d suggest an experienced pilot if you’d like one prepped.”

“No, I don’t expect to go beyond the cleared landing area out there. There’s a craft in service of which you aren’t aware,” Happy said, and laid a firm finger along his nose.

“Black operations?” the man asked wide eyed. It clearly shocked him.

“If you have some sort of operations center or traffic control?” Happy suggested.

“Yes, we have two at all times manning a communications center that keeps track of the hoppers and shuttles and directs com traffic around Mars through the satellites. We relay for the rovers and back to Earth.”

“That’s what I need, and if you’d call, somebody to prep a suit,” Happy asked. “Lead on.”

*

The control center had actual ports looking out on the landing area. The two men had an impressive collection of radios and radar, screens detailing data traffic and some live video from the planet. One screen also had the Vienna Philharmonic, live, plus speed of light lag, playing very subdued.

“Have you had anyone call for traffic clearance?” Happy asked from behind the two controllers. He didn’t bother with introductions or explanations. When the men saw their supervisor with Happy they didn’t demand who he was or why he asked. The one casually reached over and eased the music all the way off.

The two looked at each other, guilty. The older one spoke. “We haven’t had a call, but somebody appeared to paint us with radar about twenty minutes before the shuttle came in. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

“Why didn’t you call me?” the supervisor asked.

“Because it’s impossible. If I reported it you’d have us drug tested, tell me you wouldn’t, and it ended then, so there’s no proof. We don’t turn on the recorder until about five minutes before a shuttle arrival. It saves a little data storage,” he explained.

“That’s likely my ride,” Happy said. “Can you give me a live mike on the normal traffic control channel?”

“Yes sir.” The man flipped a couple switches and pressed a button. He tapped the mic and looked satisfied when a couple of the readings changed. He handed it to Happy still looking thoroughly unbelieving.

“Yo! Chariot, you chasing this flying gravel pile?” Happy demanded.

“On autopilot to… well land is kind of silly. Dock?” a male voice asked. “We are still decelerating. When we’re a couple kilometers out I’ll flip before I pass and paint you with the targeting radar. It’s more accurate. Then we’ll match and slide in front of you.”

The controllers looked at each other when they heard targeting radar. There were never any armed vessels at Mars.

“Yeah, come up on it very easy or you’ll bounce,” Happy warned. “In fact, get within a couple hundred meters of the flat field out there, and I can jump up to you.”

“With no thrusters?” Jeff asked. “And when you pass by on your way to Jupiter we get to chase you and try not to burn you up in the exhaust.”

“You’re talking to an old beam dog,” Happy reminded him. “If I can’t thread the needle and enter the lock without kissing the edges, then the beer is on me tonight. Besides, you really do come back down. It just takes fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“As dry as I am, I’ll try to plant my landing pads on that ugly potato. I may have to use the thrusters to hold them there. Then you can walk out dainty like and we’ll drop a line out the lock for you.”

“Sounds good. I have them prepping me a suit. Don’t get antsy. It takes me awhile to look at a new suit until I trust it. Especially after the last one. I’m leaving the radio room now. I’ll knock on the hull if the suit radio isn’t compatible,” Happy promised.

“Thank you boys,” Happy said, passing the mic back to them.

“Is this secret?” One of the controllers asked.

“Well, that’s up to you,” Happy said, smiling. “Did you suddenly decide nobody will think you crazy if you tell the story?”

He didn’t get an answer for that before he left.

Chapter 27

The ship outside their ports floated down like it was sinking through syrup. Its rear thrusters and front thrusters flickered together a couple times.

“What is he doing?” the one controller asked.

“The thrusters minimum pulse is too big for work this delicate. So he hits both. They’re never exactly balanced and he taps it quickly until he gets one that his radar shows is slowing his decent. That’s pretty tricky piloting actually.”

When the ship was fifty or sixty meters off the surface the thrusters flashed a few final times. Then Jeff let it fall the rest of the way. The landing jacks compressed and made it rebound about head high, but then it settled again. After three more bounces it didn’t appear to lift from contact on the last rebound. He didn’t have to hold it in place.

“That’s an atmosphere capable craft,” the senior controller said, unbelieving.

“All my hallucinations are,” the other said.

“So where is the mother ship if this is their shuttle?”

His subordinate had his own thoughts on that, but didn’t voice them.

“And armed,” the senior said, clearly uncomfortable with that.

“I don’t see anything hanging on her.”

“They said targeting radar,” he reminded him.

“They might have lied.”

“You know what? I don’t think they would bother to lie for us.”

Happy walked out in slow motion with little skipping steps. He’d obviously done this before, and it looked something like slow careful ice skating. April leaned out of the lock and threw a line down to him. She didn’t have the patience to wait for it to fall. He went up it slowly despite his earlier brags.

“Phobos Control, this is the armed merchant Dionysus’ Chariot requesting departure from your controlled space. Are we clear for other traffic?”

That was sort of amusing. They’d hadn’t asked clearance to land. Why to take off?

“Dionysus’ Chariot, we have no other traffic above Deimos orbit. You may depart at will.” Then since they asked like this was everyday normal traffic, he got bold. “Do you have a controlled destination to declare, Dionysus’ Chariot?”

The ship lifted away on maneuvering thrusters and gave one small eye searing burp of the main drive to push it ahead of the moon.

“We’re not certain. Likely we will contact local control somewhere in-system.”

The ship being black was invisible now although only a few kilometers away.

“We have radio traffic with Earth if you wish to send notice,” the controller offered enjoying this game since they were being so unexpectedly polite.

Suddenly Jeff really didn’t give a damn and answered honestly. “Thank you for your kindness, but we’d beat it back.”

The ports in the Phobos control room looked over the field, but didn’t afford a view overhead which was direction of the moon’s orbital path. Nevertheless there was a brief faint flash of light after Jeff’s last odd remark, and an odd thump like something had been dropped in the corridor.

“Right… ” the senior controller said to Jeff’s cryptic remark. Still, they were being polite even if they were sparring a little verbally, so he added, “Be safe out there.”

He waited but there was no usual answer on the radio.

“Traffic has vanished from radar,” his workmate announced.

“On what vector?”

“No vector. It was there and then it was gone.”

“That’s impossible. Is the radar down?”

“There’s nothing in range on which to test it, but self diagnosis says it is functioning.”

The junior controller did a search of the ship registry. The Dionysus’ Chariot showed as an Earth and lunar capable landing shuttle registered to Home and owned by Singh Industries. He didn’t share that with his supervisor. He’d just say it was impossible.

*

Going in system towards the huge mass of the sun, he didn’t want the speed he had coming out. He put the request in the computer which showed the projected emergence that would lead ahead of the Earth well outside the lunar orbit. He gave his passengers the courtesy of a “Here we go,” and thumbed enter.

The Earth appeared off their right port. They were upside down to the northern hemisphere, and the moon wasn’t in sight, being behind the Earth. Everything was about where it should be and he told the computer to start a long easy burn to slow them as they chased the moon around the Earth and caught up to it. If the numbers were off a little they’d adjust it in a few hours.

From the back seat Happy said, “Wow!”

“Hush you old felon,” Jeff said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“I know I caused you a lot of trouble,” Happy admitted, “but I certainly wasn’t criminal.”

“You’re not only a crook, but you’ve implicated us,” Jeff said. “We just helped you steal one very expensive pressure suit.”

“I have every right to use it as long as I work for Mars Corp,” Happy insisted.

“You haven’t quit yet?” April demanded, surprised.

Happy couldn’t decide if they were nuts or harassing him. “In all the excitement of running for my life, I forgot to turn in my notice. Now that you’ve reminded me, I’ll give them two weeks’ notice,” Happy promised.

“That’s good then,” Jeff had to allow. “Just tell them you still have some of their property, and ask them to send a shipping label.”

That was the best laugh they had all day.

*

“Where do you want to go?” Jeff asked Happy.

“I hadn’t considered anything but Home,” Happy said, surprised. “I don’t have a lot of choices.”

“You are single, healthy, unemployed, fairly well to do and have the best ship in the solar system at your command. Who has more choices?” he wanted to know.

“You do make things sound better,” Happy admitted. “Why was I getting so down?”

“Well your new job would have been fun if they’d let you do it,” Jeff allowed. “But having somebody trying to kill you is a real downer. I’ve been there,” he reminded Happy.

“When are you going to build a serious ship that will do what this one does? If I could crew on that it would be worth doing.”

“I already have a crew of four for that hull,” Jeff said. “But define serious.”

“An exploration star ship has to have science officers and redundancy in command. It should have at least two shuttles so one is in reserve. I don’t think four is sufficient for serious exploration. Maybe as a survey vessel to just look, and come back to tell the vessel with resources where to go. But to land? To put teams out on a planet collecting samples and core drillings and making maps? The more so if you ever find a living world. You’ll need a geologist and a biologist, an astronomer and a medical tech. Better a medical team. If you run into someone instead of something you may need a linguist and somebody smart enough to negotiate. Just in case, it wouldn’t hurt to have somebody that can fight.”

“I didn’t say the Chariot was star capable,” Jeff objected.

Happy just made a rude noise.

“This is growing to be an open secret,” April observed.

“Among certain people,” Jeff said. “I really think they will conspire to keep it from general public knowledge without us needing to do a thing to encourage them. Just like the Continental News story got stopped. That’s fine with me.”

“Oh, one other thing,” Happy said. “A simple thank you is not sufficient. I know April has a real rescue reflex, but this was a historic scale rescue, consider your cubic paid for. When I get a chance we’ll file the documents that it’s yours.”

Jeff braced himself expecting April to say, “You don’t have to do that.”

“Thanks Gramps. Call any time you need a lift,” April said appreciatively.

“Oh, I will. But for right now, I think I will go to the moon. I suspect if I turn up back on Home I’m going to have to fend off a lot of unwanted questions. Not from reporters, like Jeff was talking about, but friends who knew I was going.”

“We can drop you off, but we need to get the Chariot back,” Jeff said.

“It’s not very comfortable,” April warned. “Not much better than Mars.

“It has com, and I can do some things I’ve had in mind. I can help with design about as well working from home, and that girl Lindsey keeps asking me to help her write a history of Home. I only know it from a very narrow perspective. I may help her if she’ll do my biography in turn. The lag from Mars would have made it difficult, but from the moon we can actually chat.”

“Perhaps you can introduce some comforts of civilization,” Jeff speculated. “Heather would probably be open to finding a way to make beer. But if you set up a poker game, I think you are aware, she has little tolerance for people going crazy about gambling.”

“I bet a Solar I can bring her around,” Happy quipped.

Jeff just smiled. Maybe he could.

*

It was good to be home. They came back to the north hub, unloaded the drive module to their cubic and returned the Chariot. It was a long, long day with stress and physical exertion. Jeff, exhausted, actually called a cart to take them home. They’d never done that before. It was sitting waiting outside the elevator when they dropped back in the spun section. When it stopped in front of her door April had to shake him awake.

The Chariot could make its freight run, just a little late. In fact it was gone by the time they got up. It wouldn’t do to become known as an undependable carrier.

“Instant eggs in a bag or actually get dressed and go to the cafeteria?” April asked.

“It’s lunch time already,” Jeff objected. He was bending his head one way and then the other lifting his shoulders. Zero G work used muscles he didn’t need very often.

April frowned. She wasn’t tracking a hundred percent yet.

“Does that mean yes, I want to have eggs here, because they’d be a special order and a wait at the cafeteria? Or does it mean, it’s much too late for breakfast or eggs now, let’s go to the cafeteria because it’s lunch time?”

“Uh… I can’t even remember what I said. I’m still stunned. Let’s do the cafeteria because I don’t want to cook, and if you feel anything like me you shouldn’t have to.”

“Works for me. I suppose I have to put on pants.”

“And you’re the one teaching me the social graces?” Jeff asked.

“Frightening, isn’t it?”

At least they were early enough to beat most of the lunch rush. Neither ordered special service, and instead took one of the suggested lunch items for the day. The coffee wasn’t as good as what she made at home, but it was passable. Soup and a sandwich were augmented with little vegetable fritters from the buffet table, and chocolate pie. Jeff skipped dessert.

They got to the pie stage and Jeff nodded to the entry. “That’s the idiot reporter who stood blocking the elevator when I came back from Earth last time. I’m surprised her network can afford to keep her up here. She must have gotten on a waiting list way back. I certainly can’t imagine anybody like her shift sleeping on someone’s living room floor with restricted hours.”

“I bet she’s a pool reporter and they split the bill among a bunch of companies,” April said.

The woman spotted them too, but thankfully didn’t come over. She took her tray and sat using a phone in one hand and eating with the other. You’d think somebody in broadcasting would appreciate good spex.

“She doesn’t have the stabilized camera rig on her shoulder,” April said, patting where it would go. “She doesn’t want to do a shaky phone interview. People expect better now.”

“Except the ones who figure that means you are a poor independent doing it for love and day old donuts, so you’re more likely to tell them the truth.”

“What is truth?” April asked in a breathless voice.

“Well crap, there’s the camera. She must have gotten promoted and got a real cameraman. Finish your pie,” Jeff said, seeing she only had a couple bites left, “And we’ll leave.”

“Mmmm, too late,” April said around a big bite. The newsies moved to cut them off.

The woman stepped up uncomfortably close and announced herself.

“Tess Lester for Continental News. Good morning Mr. Singh, Ms Lewis.” It was more an opening lead than an introduction, but Jeff nodded. April just stared, put off.

“Let me talk a little,” Jeff’s text message said inside April’s spex. “Maybe they will be satisfied and go away.” April didn’t think so, but she sent back, “OK”.

Aloud he said, “Ah, you have a name. I didn’t get it when last we spoke.”

“I don’t recollect we spoke before,” Tess claimed.

“Then you must not have used the footage. You were blocking my access to the elevator, but cleared the way nicely when asked.”

“Oh, I do remember an encounter,” she allowed.

The camera man was shooting over Tess’ shoulder but frowning, clearly unhappy with the angle. He went around to the next table over that was vacant and stepped up on the seat. Jeff was watching Tess, but April was watching the camera man. He could get both of them in profile from that angle, except April wouldn’t look away. He looked like an idiot standing on a chair. It wouldn’t surprise April if Wanda came out and put a stop to that.

“There have been rumors your company… ” Tess started.

The cameraman, happy with the angle was apparently still not pleased with the lighting. He reached in a pocket of his cargo pants and pulled a small disk out, about the size of a hockey puck. When he tossed it in the air between them it unfolded and made a whirring noise. That made April tense. A drone is a threat, and she was keyed just short of action. Then it turned on a bright light that startled her and blinded her to everything behind it.

April drew so fast the man’s camera couldn’t render it in slow motion later. It was stuttered in frames not overlapping very closely at all. The crack of the beam interrupted Tess’ narrative. The shower of shattered drone pieces weren’t particularly dangerous, but a hot motor core went down the collar of the camera man.

His shoulder cam once locked on a subject, like Jeff, did a remarkable job of staying pointed with little jitter. But with the man doing a wild primitive dance it swept the entire room at seemingly random directions, showing overhead, floor and startled faces of other diners before he pulled his shirt out and got it to drop out.

“Oh my God! She just shot at my cameraman,” Tess shrieked.

“I can assure you,” Jeff said calmly, “if April had shot at your cameraman he’d be dead.”

“Are you people crazy to shoot at a news team?” Tess shouted.

“You aren’t listening. This is a defect in you. Nobody shot at you. The drone was a threat. It startled me and blinded me too. I suggest you learn from this and warn people you are about to shine a bright light in their face, better yet, ask permission,” Jeff warned.

“We have a right to record in public,” Tess informed him. The camera man was back in action but keeping his distance with his shirttails hanging out.

April was looking at the scorched groove in the overhead. She was going to hear about that.

Jeff looked so tired. “I have no idea what the law is in your home country, or in such shards of the pathetic European Union as still try to assert authority, but you are in a foreign country. There is no specific right by law to record here. It depends on the permission and patience of the person being recorded. I haven’t told you that you may not record me, but my patience is wearing rather thin. The only reason I have not is that the only remedy is extreme.”

“And what remedy can there be if there is no law?” Tess asked.

“I can tell you to stop recording me or I will challenge you. Then you have two choices. You can meet me in the north corridors the next morning, and bring weapons of your choice, or take the first shuttle leaving Home and never come back.”

“Do you think I’m a barbarian?” Tess demanded.

“Yes,” Jeff said, nodding vigorously, “in a lot of ways you are. You engage in rude behavior behind the shield of your profession. Despite claiming to be a journalist you seem to lack the training to do research or ask insightful questions. You however lack the primary skills of a barbarian to direct violence effectively. You lack both civilized graces and barbarian skills. That doesn’t leave much, does it? My honest answer gives you the right here to challenge me if you want, but be aware that gives me the choice of weapons.”

“You would let men duel with women?” Tess asked, outraged all over again.

“I thought you Earthies prized equality?” Jeff said, faking a shocked expression. “Here I’m treating you as an adult equal and you want to play the delicate little flower. Shame on you.”

Tess gaped at him, and then looked angry. She made a gesture to the cameraman that they were leaving and stormed out. To add to the indignity when it was clear they were headed for the door the clump of old men by the coffee pots applauded their exit. Unfortunately by then the cameraman wasn’t recording.

“Well, that was most unpleasant,” Jeff said, and he pointed at her plate. There was one last bite of French Silk pie. April smiled and ate it.

“You do know if you keep giving people opportunity eventually one will challenge you,” April warned, putting her dishes back on the tray. “They might have sent the Dutch national pistol champ, or an expert swordswoman, disguised as a reporter to sucker you into it. You might think on that, or at least what choice of weapons you’d make.”

“She’s Dutch? That’s interesting. You must have researched her after the last meeting.”

“No, I lip read the nasty word she mouthed when I fired,” April said.

Jeff was surprised she’d know a nasty word in Dutch. She hardly ever used an English one.

“You raise a valid concern. If Ms. Lester decides belatedly to challenge me I will chose pillows,” Jeff decided.

“You’d make a mockery of the duel and a spectacle?” April asked. “There are people on Home who might challenge you for doing that.”

“Oh no. I’d kill her,” Jeff vowed. “It would just instruct them I don’t need pistols or bombs to do the job. It might restrain future challenges without making a mess for housekeeping.”

April thought about how that would work, and shuddered.

When they got home April edited her news filters and bots. She kept all the key words but upped the preference for stories from Continental News.

*

Liggett walked in and tossed a printed com message in front of his boss Schober.

“Lewis quit, with two week’s notice, but said due to unexpected travel he’s not able to actually work out the notice. The distinction between that and just walking out is lost on me. Oh, and he apologizes that he has one of our suits, but offers to return it if we send him a shipping label.”

Schober looked puzzled. None of it made any sense. “Is he insane? Does he have any idea what it will cost him to live here until he can get a ship back? Send the suit back where? If he wears it back to the surface it can be lifted back to Phobos easily.”

“Look at the header on the message,” Liggett said.

Schober read it. His eyebrows pinched together and he read it again.

“That’s impossible,” he said.

*

“When you rode up I didn’t recognize you,” Jon finally mentioned to Barney.

“We don’t have a full length mirror here. You might be surprised how you’ve changed.”

“Probably,” Jon had to admit. “Truth be told I feel better though.”

“The doctor could never get me to go to the gym and exercise as often as he’d have liked,” Barney remembered. “But stacking up wood so you don’t freeze to death is a real incentive.”

“Yeah, and we are eating better, if less than we’d like sometimes. Our insides are probably in much better shape than a year ago.”

“Me more so than you. You moved around working outside. I was a desk pilot,” Barney said.

“No more breathing diesel fumes, no more handling pesticides. That can’t hurt,” Jon said.

“Good thing, because if you have a heart attack now there’s no medevac or hospital.

“Yeah, but I do want to ask Vic next time he’s here if there is a doctor on his list.”

“Why?” Jon asked. “feeling poorly?”

“No, but Cindy’s birth control implant will be wearing out soon.”

“Ahhh,” Jon said. Just when things seemed stable there was always a complication.

Chapter 28

“There’s a news piece up from that woman,” April said. “You might like to look.”

Jeff had no doubt who that woman was. He was sure April remembered her name too.

“I’ll look at it,” Jeff agreed. “Why should I stay in a good mood?”

Tess was wearing the same outfit they’d seen in the cafeteria. Jeff wondered if it was some sort of uniform or if she didn’t bring many clothes to Home. She was standing in the corridor to one side of a sign advising it was the home of Advanced Spacecraft Services. Jeff knew enough about Dave’s hospitality to assume she’d been inside and been invited to leave. He really doubted Dave would put up with her in your face style.

Tess was impatient, shifting from foot to foot and glanced at her cameraman twice. When Dave came out the door she seemed uncertain. That told Jeff that Dave’s secretary had gauged her quickly and never permitted her to bother Dave, because she didn’t recognize him. She probably expected an executive in an Earth style suit. When Dave did come out he was with another man, dressed nicer than him. Dave had on a dirty blue jumpsuit with DAVE on the pocket. The camera centered on the older fellow in the nice shirt before it swung back to Dave.

“Mr. Michelson?” Tess asked, blocking his path.

“Ms. Lester,” Dave nodded at her. “My secretary told you I don’t do interviews. Nothing has changed in the last half hour. I’m on my way to lunch, excuse me.”

Dave made to step around her. She tried to physically cut him off, but just succeeded in shouldering the man with him into the wall. She bounced off him, a little off balance herself but he recovered better, and his hand shot out and caught her. He didn’t immediately let go.

“This isn’t Earth where you can push people around. Don’t you ever think of touching me again. I suggest you go back to the filthy Mud Ball where such manners are tolerated.”

The cameraman zoomed in, but then Jeff quickly realized he hadn’t zoomed. He’d taken a couple quick steps towards the man. He intended to intervene. The hand holding the reporter became a fist. He telegraphed his intention to hit horribly. To somebody with Jeff’s reflexes it was almost like slow motion. Yet the fellow made no attempt to avoid it.

The fist grew and grew and passed behind the camera’s lens to the right. When it contacted, unseen, the scene rolled up to the overhead and stopped moving, looking up at a light strip crooked and off center. The offended man passed through the camera’s view again, looking down with a scowl as he passed. He said something inaudible to the camera, but Jeff was pretty sure it was, “Dumb ass.”

Tess helped the cameraman sit up and lean his back on the wall. She was crying and angry at the same time. She at least had the decency to ask if her cameraman was OK, but as soon as he assured her everything seemed to be working she asked if the cam was tracking, and got an, “Uh huh.”

Tess Lester composed herself, checked to make sure her company logo was showing to the camera and reported.

“As you can see this has been a dangerous assignment for our Continental Team. I’m hoping my cameraman Stan hasn’t sustained any permanent injury just now, trying to defend me. If he hadn’t stepped up God only knows what would have happened to me. That man was wearing a weapon openly as is common here. Everywhere we go violence seems to follow.”

“I wonder why that is?” Jeff mussed aloud.

“The gentleman you saw disguised in working man’s clothing is actually the owner of the largest ship building operation in translunar space. I have no idea who the thug with him is. Obviously some sort of security.”

“It’s old man Larkin you twit. One of his customers,” April said over Jeff’s shoulder.

“Yep, mean as a snake. If he bumped me into the wall I’d apologize,” Jeff said of Larkin.

“There are all sorts of rumors on the local social boards about Singh Industries and Jefferson Singh and his partners April Lewis and Heather Anderson, that’s business partners,” Tess said, and contrived to find need to rub her nose just then.

“Gossip boards you mean,” April growled.

“Locals tell us it is common knowledge that Advanced Spaceship services has been a long time business partner of Singh industries. The same Singh notorious for unilateral military action against Earth nations and institutions. They have pioneered innovations in spaceship drives and other tech including weapons. Many of the details of Singh devices are closely held trade secrets, the three have interests in ships, banking and many small businesses. Heather Anderson even styles herself a sovereign over her real estate interests on the moon.

“We question whether the brave heroes of the Pedro Escobar knew their shipbuilder had such a conflict of interest. Would they have done better elsewhere? Perhaps even be back among us safely today? Apparently the Brazilian backers of the ill fated adventure have come to that conclusion, because they have been soliciting bids for work completely removed from Home. Sources on Earth and other space based repair yards have confirmed that, though none will say so on the record.”

“Will we see this conspiracy of Home interests suddenly master the tech James Weir conceived? The international experts insist the entire concept is flawed, yet we have no real explanation of how the Pedro Escobar disappeared. I’m told there is no detailed telemetry, and space craft are not required to carry the same black box recorders aircraft use.”

“We’ll follow up on this story as more becomes available. I’m Tess Lester for Continental News EU, reporting from M3 in translunar orbit.”

“She won’t even call it Home,” Jeff said, “notice that?”

“Among other things. Are you going to call her out still?” April asked.

“Who, me? Why bother? I figure it’s a race between Dave and Larkin to see who posts a public challenge first. Given I’d bet on either one of them taking her and her cameraman armed with a Wiffle bat, why should I call attention to us? Some crazy people will just assume if we object there must be something to it. Where there’s smoke there’s fire is an unfortunate meme embedded in the public consciousness.”

“Wow… she implied Dave took his business under false pretenses, may have sabotaged the ship and stole the processes for us.”

“Tell Chen where to find this story,” Jeff requested. “He should know about it.”

“OK.” April agreed and pecked at her pad. “That’s odd. It hasn’t been posted five minutes even and it’s gone already. Good thing I saved it. I’ll send him the whole file.”

“So somebody doesn’t want this public,” Jeff said. “Facinating. I wonder if it was the Europeans? Sometimes they will kill stories for the Americans, or the other way around. If the Brazilians have any pull with the big boys to do that I have no idea.”

“Why would they care if we’re slandered?” April asked.

“Libeled,” Jeff insisted. “Published video is legally regarded like print now, not speech. I don’t think it’s the attack on us, but rather they don’t want this drive to be talked about.”

“So, somebody doesn’t think it’s a fraud?” April asked.

“They must, or what is the motive to put the kibosh on the story? Somebody wants time to work on it themselves. That’s fine. I’m sorry everyone didn’t buy the party line it was a humbug, but if they want to keep down the competition that serves us too.”

“I predict her network will get the word to yank her back home if they were told to kill this story. They aren’t going to leave her here to cause more of the same trouble,” April predicted.

“Probably, but Dave just filed on her,” Jeff said, pointing at the flashing yellow ALL message to every device in the local com net. “I bet the delay was him and old man Larkin arguing who had the greater privilege. She will be on the next outbound shuttle.”

“Yeah, unfortunately you’re right,” April said. “I’d have paid to see that duel.”

“That’s a little morbid. You’ve been around me too much. But it might have been worth bidding on the popcorn consignment,” Jeff admitted.

*

Jeff’s com gave the flash that signaled a priority call. He checked who was calling. It was April, so he hit the hot key to save all his work laid out just the way it was on the screen, and then examined his own camera image to make sure he wasn’t too scruffy before he answered.

“Cheesy’s is open.” April informed Jeff. She seemed excited.

“Yes, I knew because we lifted his first shipment of Australian beef.”

“You read the manifests that closely to know when one container of frozen hamburger is being lifted?” April asked. “That seems like micromanaging and a waste of your time.”

“Normally no,” Jeff said, refusing to take offense at the criticism. “I had this one tagged to my attention, because a friend has a special interest in the recipient.”

“Oh… thanks for taking care of Cheesy,” April said, switching gears.

“Aren’t you going to hurry over? I thought you were cheeseburger deprived?”

“I am, but I still thought it would be nice if you could go with me.” April said.

“As it happens, I have no other luncheon appointments,” Jeff admitted. “I’ll be by at 1130 and walk you down to the shuttle. Does that work?” It did.

Jeff was amazed, nobody acknowledged him, but several people waved or nodded at April as they strolled to the South hub. Then when they got on the eight seat shuttle there was a man sitting in a first row seat. It let you get off first at docking and had more leg room. He had a duffle on the seat beside him rather than put it between his knees. He was either saving it for someone or just being selfish. But when April came through the access he stepped in front of her before she went to the back and waved her into the seat.

“Thank you,” April said easily, and the man tossed his duffle to the back so it did a bounce off the overhead and pulled himself after it by the seat back. He did a slow easy turn-over off the overhead and slid into a rear seat. His duffle was already floating beside him and he pulled it down. The man was smooth in zero G. The volume wasn’t big enough to have seats on opposing surfaces, but that made it easier to get to the rear having a clean flat overhead. There wasn’t any aisle either, which let them space the seats apart more comfortably.

April pushed off on tip-toe lightly with a little twist, put a hand up to reverse off the overhead, and came back down planting her bottom in the seat exactly.

Jeff joined her, pulled a thin strap across his thighs and leaned over by her ear.

“Do you know that fellow?” he asked softly.

“Why? Jealous?” she teased.

“Yes, but of you not him,” Jeff admitted. Everybody seemed to know April.

“Did you notice his rear end as he turned away?” April asked.

“I don’t have a real interest that way,” Jeff said primly, “and while you might, I’d rather not discuss the fine nuances of the aesthetics involved.”

“Not him, his pants,” April said. “Now that you have people living in zero G and commuting back and forth they’re making pants with sticky bottoms just like they make duffle bags and footies. And people are putting patches on their old pants too. It holds you in a seat or even just backed up against a bulkhead if you don’t move around too much.”

“No, I didn’t notice. I wish I’d thought of it first,” Jeff admitted.

The flight was just a couple minutes and completely automated. The hatch sealed to port with very flat surfaces touching with less than a tenth of a cubic centimeter void left over, so there was no pumpdown.

The terminal had a few seats as benches, but a fair number of standing spots, with a toe strap and an upright with a small tray on top to hold your pad or coffee. There were a few sitting waiting for the shuttle and a couple hanging down like bats from a Earthie perspective. You could go straight through to a tunnel or up or down to two waiting surfaces. There was no effort to keep everything aligned one way for newbies. Straight to their right was a sealed opening that would be April’s pizza joint soon. And the other way was an open bright portal into Cheesy’s.

April ordered for them. Grilled buns, medium rare with light Montreal steak seasoning, double sharp cheese, and a basket of seasoned garlic fries, each. Nothing else, April insisted. He could get mushrooms or olives or whatever another time if he found it lacking.

“Well?” April asked after one bite.

“Now how can I possibly form an opinion on one bite,” Jeff objected. He took a second bite, and chewed thoughtfully.

“This,” he admitted after the second, “does not even resemble a cheeseburger from the cafeteria.”

“Told you.”

“Next time you pay,” Cheesy insisted. Jeff slid a few bits in the tip canister when he was turned away cooking.

*

“Hello Dears,” Heather said from the com screen.

“Are you going to come see us again?” April asked hopefully.

“Soon, I have just a few things to handle and I can take a couple days off, but I had the oddest second-hand offer I thought you should know about. Indeed, I’d like you to advise me.”

“But of course. We’ll share the blame,” Jeff offered gallantly.

“Something like that,” April offered less enthusiastically.

“The French, having sold that very nice separation technology to us for a bowl of stew, now want to know what we are bothering to keep and stockpile. I told the nice gentlemen that we weren’t born yesterday. I’m not going to provide details of our operation so they can low ball the bid on the portion they wish to buy.

“He claimed not to have the authority to tell me, which isn’t like him at all. The gentleman is usually quite self-important. So I invited him to call me back when he could. It must have been a difficult condition, because it took him three days to get back to me. Do you want to guess what they want?” Heather invited.

“Helium 3,” Jeff said. “You’re right. It’s from his customer who doesn’t want to deal with you directly.”

“Should that hurt my feelings?” Heather asked.

“In business you can’t afford to have any feelings,” Jeff said. “But this will have more political implications than just financial consequences.”

“Exactly my thought and concern. I believe at one time you expressed a desire to save the He3 we got sorted out from regolith. Is that still a concern? I’ve admitted we have been separating it, but I have not committed to supply it.”

“Oddly enough, no. I probably should have said something about that when it changed. My bad,” Jeff apologized. “Eventually it would have still been nice to have the use of it, but it is no longer a necessity. Now I have some really conflicted feelings about it.”

“Why Dear?”

“Because we no longer need it as badly, but I believe they do. If you don’t supply what you mine it may be an inconvenience, but like anything they must have, they will do whatever they need to do, and spend as much as is within their ability, to get it.”

“But they won’t spend it with me,” Heather pointed out.

“They’re offering a tempting deal?” Jeff asked.

“Not at first. They were offering eight hundred North American Dollars a liter standard P and T. I pointed out we have quite a bit of agricultural by-product now and increasing, so we now can produce our own sani-wipes and don’t have to import them. He seemed hurt by that.”

“So that’s their customer?” April asked. “North America?”

Heather spread her hands, uncertain. “I’m not sure it’s safe to assume that. They may be sneaky enough to offer dollars to throw us off, or they might just have been stuck with a lot of dollars and want to dump them. I suggested instead they trade copper or silver since both are lacking in the moon compared to our uses for them. He seemed horrified at that, but when I suggested gold as an alternative it made the copper and silver seem a better idea after all. But he again claimed need to ask instructions on what payment is possible, so I’m waiting again.”

“There’s another advantage besides the pay,” Jeff said. “We were accused of plotting to make the same sort of vehicle James Weir did. If we sell off our Helium 3 that lifts the cloud of suspicion from us. And if anyone thought they were racing us to build a Helium 3 powered ship, that will reassure them.”

“I like it,” Heather said. “This may work out well for everyone.”

“I wonder,” April said frowning.

“Yes?” Heather prompted her.

“Are the French devious enough to have sold you the tech to get another source of He3? If you weren’t saving it would they have suggested you start doing so for them, before you got a lot of units deployed and the design locked in?”

“Perhaps someone else behind the scenes. I don’t think Monsieur Poincaré who I’m dealing with is that bright. We’ll probably never know now,” Heather said. “It’s too late to deny stockpiling it after we’re to the stage of negotiating a price.”

“You might as well make money off it while you can,” Jeff said. “It’s temporary anyway.”

“How so?” Heather asked.

“You and the French, and anyone else they can get in the act can supply enough for their research, and maybe limited runs for one starshp, but to supply a fleet of vessels? There will never be enough regolith processed for that. I haven’t run the numbers, but I’d also bet there isn’t enough money in just the Helium 3 unless you are mining the other stuff too.”

“If they have need of a lot of Helium 3 to run a star faring civilization, where will they get it?” Heather asked.

“The only natural terrestrial source is to separate it from natural gas,” Jeff said. But the ratio of He3 to He4 is very poor. It’s overwhelmed by all the He4 from the alpha emissions of radioactive elements. It’s in the Earth’s atmosphere of course, but in too low a concentration to mine. Getting it from both those sources takes more energy than it yields. Bombarding lithium with neutrons likewise will never produce the volumes they need.

“Unless somebody comes up with new tech, the only source is to mine the atmospheres of gas giants. That’s going to take some interesting engineering too. Deuterium will be easier to mine, but we’re not where we need to be yet to do that.”

“Think on it,” April urged him. “If we can figure out how to mine gas giants before they do maybe we can capture that market too. Maybe we can float extraction devices in the atmosphere and recover them after they extract enough fuel and are filled up.”

“You’re a bit greedy, aren’t you?” Jeff asked. “I like that in you.” He didn’t want to tell her how far away he was from being able to float a balloon on Jupiter or Saturn.

“More to the point, Heather suggested, “if we could be the source of fuel from gas giants we’d have a handle on both their exploration and trade. If they get too frisky with us we could shut them down in short order. But that will only work if they don’t know the ultimate source of their fuel. That also limits how greedy we can be. We have to be cheap enough and reliable enough they won’t urgently push to get their own sources, or even stockpile fuel against the possibility of being cut off.”

Jeff looked thoughtful, but didn’t reject the idea. “None of that will work if our names are attached to the project. Even as peripheral investors. It has to be undercover from this moment, from the very start. I know I don’t have the skills to build a front company and operate it so nobody can figure out it’s true nature, but I believe Chen is probably devious enough to run something like that. It seems just the sort of thing a master spy could do. Certainly a very tiny fraction of the cash flow would be more than everything I’m able to pay him right now. That’s all assuming I can figure out how to make the mining work. But I’ll ask him to be thinking on the problem, and how he’d do it.”

Heather slowly got a wicked smile. “They would just croak if they understood their payments to us will be helping us build a much better star ship.”

“Well yeah,” April agreed. “Even at this initial level of support we’re talking about, paying us for Helium 3 from regolith extraction.”

“I’m not sure there isn’t somebody behind the scenes fully aware of what’s happening,” Jeff said. “They did after all hush up that news release. But what other choices do they have? They don’t have any alternative path to the stars right now so they will deal with the Devil if they must to move forward.”

“Indeed,” April agreed, “and may I say, you look quite fetching in horns, sir.”

Heather started giggling at that. Jeff just shrugged.

“They already think that of me. There’s no fighting their ability to paint me that way, so it’s the sort of thing you either ignore or embrace fully and wear as a badge of honor.”

Chapter 29

When Jeff said it was time for his pilot to come get some familiarization with the control systems of the Hringhorni at Home, it was totally unexpected that Heather would say, “No,” so sternly. He’d seen that look before. There wasn’t any room for discussion.

She must have seen his dismay, because she explained.

“It’s bad enough you’re stealing my workers away. We’re scrambling to recruit people with the same range of skills. The least you can do is let them do their jobs here as long as possible.”

So Jeff set up their flight simulator on the moon. It didn’t turn out to be that difficult with Heather’s cooperation. In the end it was easier than it would have been at Home. If felt weird to have Heather assign him a room bigger than his office on Home without displacing someone or even asking rent. She just waved it away when he offered.

Jeff brought a couple ship computers from Dave’s shop and borrowed four big screens to simulate the ports. The control screens were the actual ones they intended to use in their ship.

He and Deloris were sitting in delicate web chairs built for lunar gravity instead of real acceleration couches with Singh compensators hanging where they could swing in over them. They couldn’t simulate the acceleration anyway. Well, he could, but couldn’t spare the time and materials. The big thing was he had the programs and what data they’d had managed to gather from test flights with the Chariot.

When they darkened the room it was quite realistic. Deloris even insisted on wearing a pressure suit. If that helped her psychologically that was fine with Jeff. Alice was working, but Barak was off shift and more than just interested. They intended to cross train him to be tested and licensed when jump pilot became a publicly known specialty. So he sat the right seat.

Jeff sat behind, and provided traffic control responses. It felt natural, and they bantered about things the same as any crew on a real mission would. Both Deloris and Barak wanted to know details of the ship construction and the way the company was dealing with the Earthies and French moon colony. Jeff was happy to talk about it. The three partners who made up Singh Industries, didn’t operate with complex layers of secrecy. They might hold you out of a project. But once you were in you were all the way in. A lot of workers didn’t know there was going to be a starship, but once they knew their coworkers didn’t have to expend time and energy determining how much each one could know.

They soon knew about the deal pending with the French over processing regolith. They understood that such a source of Helium 3 would not suffice long term. Deloris expressed the idea that France not North America might have been the agent behind both the tech and the mining of the regolith, but that their colony’s sudden demands for independence might have disrupted the program, or at least its timetable.

That seemed such a reasonable supposition that Jeff made a note of it on his pad to discuss it with April and Heather. Sharing the details of your program with subordinates risked total catastrophe if one of them turned, but their people were a smaller group, much more tightly aligned politically than any Earth nation with all their factions. On the plus side, sharing it brought in much wider sources of ideas and solutions than limiting important secrets to a tiny core group.

“That idea of April’s to float things in Jupiter’s atmosphere and recover them sounds pretty tough to do,” Barak said, just as Jeff already thought. “Even finding them later. The radio noise and radiation around Jupiter is crazy, and we don’t understand Jovian weather very well. It makes more sense to scoop it in a ram sort of a robot vehicle and compress it. But how much can you compress and lift back out? Unless you could process it on the fly.”

“The French device will separate isotopes as well as distinct elements,” Jeff said. “But it’s so slow. I don’t see any way to speed it up.”

“How do they separate uranium for fission bombs?” Barak asked. “The fissile isotope is only like a percent or two isn’t it?”

“A bit less than a percent,” Jeff confirmed. “They mostly ionize a beam of uranium vapor in a vacuum with a carefully tuned laser, and separate it electrostatically now. The Israelis perfected that last century. Way back, in the 1940s, they used to make a gaseous compound of uranium and separate it in centrifuges. You can do the same thing squirting it into a vortex chamber. It was horribly expensive and the difference in weight between U 235 and U 238 is so small the enrichment in each stage was small. And the gas is nasty and corrosive.”

“So you need to separate out the helium and then separate your isotopes?” Barak asked. “You couldn’t separate one isotope out of a mix straight from the atmosphere? Because the difference in mass of He3 vs He4 is pretty big, not like uranium.”

“You can only spin a centrifuge up so fast or it flies apart. You can only build up pressure so far to squirt it in a vortex chamber. You’ll start having problems with the flow going transonic and generating shock waves there too,” Jeff said.

“How many G’s acceleration on the inside surface of a good centrifuge?” Barak asked.

When Jeff didn’t say anything for a long while Barak looked over his shoulder. Jeff was staring at him, eyes bugged out, mouth slightly open. He looked stricken, his face contorted in a pattern Barak didn’t understand.

“Are you well, Jeff?” Barak asked. He’d never been around anyone having a heart attack or a stroke. But he was starting to suspect Jeff was having a medical emergency.

Jeff seemed to have trouble considering the question, but then managed to focus on Barak, closed his mouth and made a negating motion, waving his hand. That changed into a single digit that was the common gesture for – just a minute.

Barak looked at Deloris. She was continuing with her training exercise no matter what. It was that real to her. Maybe she thought Jeff was trying to fake them out with a simulated emergency.

“Go ahead,” Jeff said, after a pause. “I have to think.”

They didn’t need him to fill in as a controller, so that didn’t disrupt the training run. But neither was Barak following what Deloris was doing anymore. When Barak looked back again Jeff was leaning forward with his hands steepled over his nose, and his eyes closed. Barak couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. But if he lost consciousness he couldn’t hold his hands up like that.

After awhile he did drop his hands, looking perfectly normal, and said, “OK, where are we?” It was a rhetorical question. He would figure out where they were in the exercise faster than they could tell him, as soon as he looked at the screens. But it was just his way of telling them he was fully back with them in his consciousness.

“April said you flip out sometimes,” Barak said. “It’s kind of scary to see.”

“You’ve done it to me before,” Jeff said. The tone was accusing.

“Done what?”

“Triggered me into looking at reality from a completely different perspective. You did it when you told me how to start a plasma engine sitting on the Earth’s surface, and jolted me pretty bad when you suggested pushing M3 out past the moon. Though you weren’t there to see that one. I was boggled both times.”

“What did it this time?” Barak asked, looking confused.

“You said Gs when talking about a centrifuge. I’m not used to thinking of it in those terms. We get so used to our own comfortable frame of reference,” Jeff said, making the sides of an imaginary little box with his hands. Then he sighed.

“I have a powerful tool able to directly create a gravitational gradient that can separate isotopes much better than a centrifuge. I just didn’t think to apply it.”

Barak looked like he was going to speak and Jeff pointed a finger at him.

“If you say it’s obvious I’m going to come over there and smack you.”

Barak held his palms up, suing for peace.

“You jolted me into a whole cascade of ideas this time. I can see a drone dipping into a gas giant and scooping gas,” Jess said with a swoop of his hand. “It will pass through a slot with a tremendous gravitation gradient in a shaped gap and most of it will be vented right back outside. Then the lighter elements stratified until the hydrogen and helium remain. That second waste volume will be diverted back outside and the hydrogen and helium sorted right down to the isotopes if you wish. One last stage will then be exhausted back outside and only the one or two final portions we want captured.”

“Ah, it’s a continuous flow process,” Barak said, nodding. “That’s always better than any batch system.”

“While you two were totally breaking the sim I arrived and am in orbit around Saturn,” Deloris told them, waving at the image out the fake forward ports. “You can look at the recording if you want to see how it went. It was as boring as white rice with no toppings. But that’s how a mission is supposed to be.”

“I will review it, fast-forwarded,” Jeff promised. “And the next one we do I’ll try to fully attend… mentally.”

“I’ll just keep my mouth shut,” Barak promised.

“No, really. It’s worth breaking routine when you give me an idea like this,” Jeff said.

“Unless it’s not a sim and you kill us all,” Deloris said, critically.

“Yes ma’am,” Jeff agreed. “You will be in command. You can call us on it.”

That got a sharp nod of approval from her, despite her wary look.

*

“Are you happy with your crew and trials?” April asked when Jeff returned to Home.

“Yes, and I believe Barak gave me an insight to be able to mine fuel not just for local commerce but traveling deep among the stars, without setting up a mining operation and waiting for it to be productive, at each stop along the way.”

April nodded, interested, but not demanding details immediately, as she had news.

“I had a talk with Chen yesterday. I told him I’d brief you when you returned rather than interrupt you on the moon.”

“Thanks, what did he have?” Jeff asked and took a sip of her good coffee.

“You wanted James Weir’s partners checked out. Remember? It seems we didn’t ask enough questions. Fortunately Chen continued looking into them on his own initiative.”

Jeff just gave a look of interest and didn’t interrupt.

“We checked their immigration status and parents, but totally failed to ask after their siblings,” April said ruefully.

“Ahh… ” Jeff did say aloud.

“The partner with French parents has a brother who is number two in the French space agency, and his sister is among the directors of the French central bank,” April said.

“Well, his parents did a fine job raising them all to high expectations didn’t they?”

“Indeed,” April agreed. “Chen was able to place them all meeting together on several occasions, not just at grandma’s house for cookies and milk, but at government offices with senior officials.”

“Amazing. After hearing most of the details, our new pilot, Deloris, predicted it would be France behind the whole star ship project rather than North America.”

“I’d say she’s a keeper, maybe for bigger things, if she’s that perceptive,” April suggested.

“We have a good relationship with France. Why would Weir hide that?” Jeff asked.

“Who said he even knew?” April asked. “They were business partners not buddies. Take yourself as an example. Do you know if Dave has siblings or what they do?”

“Good point,” Jeff agreed. “We just talk business and I’d feel nosy to even ask anything about his personal life. We don’t belong to any clubs or anything together.”

“Besides, they’re getting everything they want out of us right now,” April pointed out.

“Perhaps they think for some reason that revealing the ultimate backers and users would cause us to raise objections,” Jeff speculated.

“Or perhaps they have internal dissension over us. Perhaps there are factions opposed to closer relations,” April said. “They never have formally recognized us. And they technically are still part of the European Union. The member states still pay lip service to it, while doing their own thing. Whatever reason, they think secrecy is an advantage for now.”

“It’s a small advantage to know France is behind the star-drive when they think it a secret.” Jeff decided. “I’m not sure how we’ll ever use it, but we’ll keep the secret and know the motives behind their public actions better for that knowledge.”

“But we have everything we need now, don’t we?” April asked.

“Need? Yes, I think so. We have a better drive to get out ahead of the herd. Thanks to Barak I think we can go very far faster than them. We have the funding needed thanks to Heather and Dave volunteering. You’ve convinced me we can raise more if need be, without unduly diluting the potential payout.” He stopped on an odd note, without finality, like he wasn’t done.

“Is there something else?” April asked him.

“Time. All we need is a little more time to put it all in motion.”

END

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