Capella, a bright triple star on Auriga’s chest glared hotly at her. Capella was sometimes called “The Goat,” and near it were a triangle of stars referred to as the kids. She noted several open clusters in the formation, each containing about a hundred stars and—
according to the readings on the telescope—sitting nearly three thousand light-years away. She could see them plainly when she made a few adjustments. The starlight was intoxicating.
“Auriga’s Streetcar.” Named for the constellation this telescope was keyed to and for the shape of the station and the business Charles Yerkes had been famous for. “An appropriate name after all,” she decided. Auriga the Charioteer that beckoned winter.
Hoshi was well into the winter of her life.
She would have watched longer, had the ache in her joints not become a dull, persistent pain she could no longer ignore, had the cold not sunk in to become unbearable and forced her to replace her helmet, had the station not groaned and shuddered once more.
With a great sigh, she reluctantly edged away from the refractor and busied herself with removing the lenses from two of the smaller telescopes. Were she younger and stronger, she could have taken more this trip.
As she turned to leave, a small telescope on the opposite end of the observatory caught her notice. It looked much newer than everything else. Not an antique, it would be her last priority.
Hoshi patiently made her way back through the narrow gray tunnels and to her skimmer, carefully placing the treasures in her hold and retrieving thick silk padded slipcases that she intended to use for the largest lenses. She tried hard to thrust to the back of her mind the groaning of the station. It moved more this time, slipping in its orbit, causing her to curse her slow, old woman’s body. The station hadn’t days left, she knew now. It likely had only hours. And she would have to push herself to gain Yerkes’ antique lenses and more.
A glance through the large refractor when she was again in the observatory. Auriga had moved, or rather, the Streetcar had moved significantly. Hoshi worked fast to remove the lenses, a task that should take two or more people, or that should take time and great care—she couldn’t afford the time.
Somehow she handled the task. And with the room now at zero-g, and the lenses protected by the silk, she maneuvered them through the ghost-lit corridors. She would have taken one at a time, Hoshi had the patience for it. It would have been safer for the lenses, easier for her to deal with. But she handled the time limitations presented her, and she fought to keep from crying out as her fingers—clamped viselike around the edges of the slipcases— ached so terribly from age that they felt on fire.
“A few minutes more,” she told herself. “Just a few more.” Then she would be settled in her skimmer and heading toward her Takasago home on the coast, contacting several potential buyers and cherishing her look through the telescope, her oh-so-wonderful view of Auriga’s goat and kids. What a story she would tell her grandson.
“No.” Her fingers opened in surprise, and she had to struggle to catch the slipcases as they floated upward. “No!” Looking out through the hatch window, Hiroshi could see the stars. But she couldn’t see her ship.
Was she at the wrong bay? Had her aging mind took her down a different corridor and to the bays on the other side of the Streetcar? Had she…?
Hoshi froze, eyes locked onto a spot below a second-magnitude star. There was her skimmer, drifting free of the Streetcar. “How?” her gaze settled on the hatch door. She’d done nothing to release it, nothing to break the lock. “How is it possible?”
Turning and swallowing her fear, she summoned what speed she could and carried the lenses down one corridor and then the next, her helmet beam bouncing light off doorways and protrusions, sending shadows to eerily dancing. Her side burned from exertion by the time she reached the other bays and spied a sleek freighter. Someone else had made the trip to scavenge from the dying station. That someone had released her ship. There were no markings that she could see from this position. What nationality?
She quietly made her way to the hatch, worked the controls, and slipped inside the freighter. Empty—of people anyway. It was otherwise filled. A glance through the hold revealed the lenses she had previously stored on her ship. There were also circuitry cards and various other things—all taken in a hurry judging by the way they were strewn about.
“Pirates,” she cursed, as she carefully placed the antique lenses alongside the others and backed out the hatch. Well, she could be a pirate, too, take this ship and head home. The station lurched and something popped deep inside a corridor, and for an instant she indeed considered taking the freighter right this instant—not only would she be saving her life, but she’d be saving the valuable, historical lenses. In a sense, she had a duty to save both.
But she’d prefer not to leave someone stranded here. And she was curious about the pirates and what else they might be taking from this place.
“How long?” she wondered, as she made her way through the network of corridors, glancing in rooms and in service ways and heading toward the observatory, where she was certain the pirates were working to gather the remaining lenses. “How long does the station have?”
She nearly ran into him as she emerged from the last corridor and into the observatory, and he released what he’d been carrying—a spectroscope, a mechanism used to show the spectra of an object being viewed by the telescope it was attached to. The device hovered in the space between them.
“Pirate,” she said.
He laughed, the sound odd and echoing in his helmet. It took him a moment to gain his composure.
“Pirate,” she repeated.
“Hardly,” he returned, his voice rich and deep, matching his youth. He was striking, though she wouldn’t call him handsome, with a crooked hawkish nose and an impish grin. A dark lock of hair hung down what she could see of his forehead—skin eggshell white. His brown eyes flashed at her almond-shaped ones. “And you’re hardly what I expected. I certainly wouldn’t’ve released your ship if I’d have known that you were… an old woman.”
He looked through her faceplate, seeing her myriad wrinkles and noting her anger. “A very old woman.”
She snatched at the spectroscope with a speed that surprised both of them.
“I’m not a pirate.”
“A murderer, then,” she hissed. “You would have me die, marooning me.”
A shrug. “I shouldn’t’ve released your ship. Truly, I’d never done such a thing before. But I’d never been challenged on a find either. It was impulse.”
“I was here first.”
“You can travel back on my freighter, old woman. I won’t maroon you. But all the finds are mine. Be satisfied you’ll have your life.”
Hoshi opened her mouth to argue. The antique lenses were hers, this find was hers.
Would have been hers much earlier had she not been ill, had her snip not needed repairs.
They were all hers—every piece in his hold. But she said nothing. There would be time on the trip back to Earth to think, to plan what to say to port authorities. She had a good reputation, and someone would listen to her. The lenses, and anything else she cared to claim from the young man’s craft, would be hers.
He was continuing to talk, and she was shutting out his words, craning her neck around him to see the telescopes, several of which had been cruelly dismantled.
“Barbarian.”
“I’ll settle for that,” he said, taking the spectroscope from her. “Keith Polanger,” he added by way of introduction.
She did not give him her name.
“You could help, grab some of those fittings—they’re made of brass. And I’ve got a half dozen lenses loose.” He nodded upward, and she saw them resting against the ceiling.
“And stay close to me, old woman.”
It was clear he didn’t want her out of his sight, didn’t want to risk the chance she might take his freighter and instead maroon him. Two more trips, and Hoshi was moving very slowly, fatigued despite the weightlessness and despite her simmering ire. She would claim all of his hold, she decided, once they were Earthward. His ship for good measure.
And she’d see to it he was sent to prison. With fortune, he would be her age when he got out. Port authorities were hard on pirates.
“Aren’t you too old for this?” Keith had been saying other things, all trying to draw her out, some an effort at
