freighters or passenger vessels, but this group of travelers, who came from a camp outside Tashkent, were an exception.
Guardians were stationed at that camp to keep order, and Guardians traveled with any settlers who left the camp on the shuttle flights to the Wheel. Usually Alonza or one of the other officers met the new arrivals and ushered them to a bay near the dock holding the Habber ship that was to take them on the next leg of their journey to Anwara, the vast space station that circled Earth’s sister planet, but that was not why she had come here this time.
Settlers, Alonza thought; traitors to Earth was what many would call them. She had nothing against the scientists and specialists and workers who were trained for the terraforming Venus Project, who had been chosen to go there and who had proved their worth. But the people from the camp outside Tashkent were another matter. They abandoned their homes and their work and even gave up all of their credit, to go to the camp and wait for passage until a few more workers might be needed inside the domed settlements that were being raised on the still inhospitable surface of Venus. They were, most of them, malcontents willing to leave their own Nomarchies to gamble on getting a chance at making a new world and a new life for themselves. Maybe the Project needed such people, and perhaps the Council of Mukhtars that governed Earth’s Nomarchies had been wise to allow such camps as a social safety valve, but Guardians had to keep order in the camps, and Alonza considered that a waste of their resources.
A door opened and a Guardian pilot in a black uniform entered the waiting area, followed by a man and a woman who wore pins of silver circles on their blue tunics, pins that such people were required to wear in Earthspace so that anyone seeing them would know at a glance what they were. Alonza looked away from the pair as the pilot saluted her.
“Major Lemaris,” he said, “how good of you to greet me. Congratulations on your recent promotion. I hear that it’s well deserved.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Looking up at him, Alonza wondered if the man was only being polite or trying to suck up to her in the hope of gaining some future favor. Hard to tell, but it did him no harm either way.
“As soon as our charges are off the shuttlecraft, my crew and I will speed them on their way to their ship,” the man continued.
“I came here,” Alonza said, “to tell you that their trip has to be delayed. Your passengers will have to stay here, so get them into the lift and shoot them through the spoke to Level B and the lounge next to the assistant director’s office. We’ll keep them under guard there until we can allow them to board their transport.”
“There’s thirty of them,” the pilot said. He glared at the man and woman with the silver pins, as if they were to blame for the delay. “Might be kind of crowded.”
“They shouldn’t be there for more than ten to twenty hours,” Alonza murmured, “thirty at most. They’re from a camp, so they know hardship.”
The pilot shrugged.
“Warn them that it’ll be close to a g there,” she went on, “not the half-g they’ve got here in the hub.”
“I assume that we at least will be able to stay aboard our ship until our departure, since I know the Wheel’s space is limited.” The man in the blue tunic had spoken; he was a small man, barely taller than Alonza, with short dark hair and brown almond-shaped eyes. His companion, a short dark-eyed woman with a cap of thick black hair, stared past Alonza, avoiding her gaze.
“Unfortunately, you can’t go aboard,” Alonza replied, “because a few components in the dock have to be replaced before it’s safe to ferry anybody to your ship.”
The man frowned, looking as though he did not believe her, not that it mattered whether he did or not. He and his companion were Habitat-dwellers, or Habbers as they were derisively called. Their ancestors had abandoned Earth centuries ago for the Associated Habitats, the homes they had made for themselves in space, and there were many who believed that, despite their appearance, the Habbers were no longer truly human, that their genetic engineering had far surpassed what Earth allowed among its people.
Habbers might have their uses; some of them worked with the scientists and specialists of the Venus Project, and having them ferry settlers from the camps to Venus was certainly a convenience. Changing the orbits of a few asteroids so that they would come nearer to Earth and could be more easily mined had been another service of the Habbers to the home world.
Alonza could grant all of that, but loathed the air of superiority that Habbers exuded, as if the resources they provided and the necessary tasks they voluntarily undertook for Earth’s benefit were little more than crumbs thrown to beggars. She thought then of how the home world must seem to Habbers, with its flooded coastlines, melting ice caps, and an atmosphere that was still too thick with carbon dioxide six centuries after the Resource Wars. They probably thought of themselves as fortunate for having abandoned what they must see as a played-out world populated by deluded die-hards. Even these two Habber pilots had that look of superiority in their eyes, the calm steady gaze of people who seemed to lack any turbulent and upsetting emotions.
“Where are we to stay, then?” the female Habber asked.
The woman probably expected to have to stay in the lounge with all the passengers going to Venus. Alonza was silent for a moment, then said, “We want you to be comfortable. I believe that our agreement with the Associated Habitats also requires us not to inflict any unnecessary discomfort on any of you. So we’ve found a room for you in our officers’ quarters. You’ll have to share it, but there are two beds, and a public lavatory just down the corridor.”
“That’s very kind of you,” the male Habber said, and she heard a note of sarcasm in his voice. Being sarcastic was uncharacteristic of such cool and rational types as Habbers, but then this Habber and his companion were not like others of their kind.
After getting their thirty Venus-bound passengers out of the lift and settled in the lounge, Alonza led the two Habbers to their room, which was just three doors from her own quarters. In the three years since she had been assigned here, she had grown used to the gently curving and brightly lit corridors, to the gravitylike acceleration, only slightly weaker than Earth’s, that was imparted by the Wheel’s rotation around its hub, to the pilots and passengers passing end-lessly through this station. Every twenty-four-hour period brought the promise of something new—of an unusually interesting traveler, official visitors, a new detachment of Guardians with intriguing tales of a Nomarchy she did not know that much about, the possibility of a mission that might take her to the L-5
spaceport, to one of the industrial, recreational, and military satellites that orbited Earth, or even to Luna. Her post here often imparted a heightened sense of expectation, of feeling that she was on a journey that would never end. It was as if she were somehow picking up that feeling of anticipation from all of those who passed through the Wheel on their way to other places.
“Your room,” Alonza said to the two Habbers as she pressed the door open for them.
They entered a small room bare of furnishings except for a small wall screen and two cushions in front of two low shelves. “You pull the beds out from the wall.” She demonstrated by pressing a panel and pulling out the lower bunk. “And the lavatory’s four doors down to your right. I hope everything’s satisfactory, but if there’s anything else you need, do let me know.”
“We’re most appreciative,” the male Habber said.
“I’d be most grateful if you would both be my guests at supper in two hours,” Alonza continued. She thought of asking Tom Ruden-Nodell, the physician in charge of the Wheel’s infirmary and the closest friend she had here, to join them, but decided against it. She would get more of a sense of these two by herself.
The Habbers glanced at each other, apparently surprised by her offer of hospitality.
“We’re a bit tired,” the man said. “Perhaps another time—”
“Tired? I didn’t think Habitat-dwellers were as subject to our frailties. Three hours, then?
That should give you time to rest. I look forward to seeing you then. I’ll send a Guardian to fetch you.” Alonza turned and left the room before the man could object again.
“Detain the operative,” Colonel Sansom had said in his message, sent to her over a confidential channel. Alonza had seen the woman’s file, stored under the name she was using. This was a matter Colonel Sansom should have handled himself, but he had left suddenly to go to an asteroid tracking station two days ago, to supervise repairs after a micrometeorite strike had damaged three telescopes, and would not get back to the Wheel for another thirty hours at least. A more easygoing officer might have sent a subordinate to the station, but not the obsessively conscientious Jonas Sansom. Tracking the orbits of asteroids that might threaten Earth was one of the most important duties of Guardians, perhaps the most important. Colonel Sansom would report to his superiors that
