John carried the last sack back to his ship and Ellen accompanied him with the rake and the shovel.
“Hey, did ground control even contact you when we were coming in?” she asked. “I didn’t hear a peep.”
“I told tunnel traffic control where I was going when I exited. Didn’t you get queried?”
“Yeah, but that’s Stryx traffic control, not Earth. Or don’t they even care here?”
“They’re probably overworked. I’ll bet hundreds of independent traders are landing in out-of-the-way places every day looking for antiques they can fob off on the aliens as stolen museum pieces.”
“I hear about that all the time but I’ve never actually met a trader who makes a living at it.”
John dumped the sack on top of the others and stretched a piece of cargo netting across the load out of habit, even though he had no intention of lifting off that night. “I think the traders with established customer lists for antiques tend not to talk about it because they don’t want to invite competition. Did you hear about that crazy new scheme for sharing market data?”
“I signed up,” Ellen said, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “I’ve already earned a nine-star trust rating.”
“Sounds like you’re working on a story, but I know better than to pry. Why don’t you go clean up while I make us something? If you put out your camp gear, we can eat outside.”
“If you’re implying I stink, you stink twice as bad, so do us both a favor and take a shower while the grub is warming up.”
A half an hour later, John emerged from his two-man Sharf trader carrying a large tray with both hands. Ellen had already set up folding chairs and a table between their ships and was sipping wine from a metal cup.
“You went all out,” John observed, indicating the wine bottle. “I thought you preferred quantity over quality.”
“I took two cases in trade for an industrial spool of copper wire,” Ellen replied, ignoring the dig at her drinking habits.
“The standard spool? Doesn’t sound like much of a deal on your part.”
“The wine is surprisingly good, and I’d been trying to unload that wire ever since I took it in trade for a broken Frunge wing set.”
“Where did you get the wings?” John asked, propping one edge of the tray on the folding table while unloading it with the other hand.
“Failed vacation,” Ellen told him. “I signed the waiver to skip flying lessons because I was short on time and I ended up crashing before I got off the ground.”
“How is that even possible?”
“You’d have to ask the guy who taxied into me. He waived the lessons too. Anyway, the Frunge rental place kept my deposit and I became the proud owner of a broken set of wings, though the actuator still has some life in it.”
“I guess a broken wing set for a spool of copper isn’t a bad deal.”
“Plus I was tired of looking at those wings in my hold. Is that lasagna with meat sauce?”
“Yeah, but I think the meat sauce is fake. I’ve got a couple hundred packages of it left if you’re interested in a bit of barter. This whole meal is freeze-dried, including the vegetables, and it lasts for years. It’s all good stuff, but I get tired of eating it every day.”
“What did you trade for it?”
“Did you hear about the Ark?”
“Sure, that was less than a year ago. The crazy cult leader who thought he could turn an old freighter into a colony ship and brought his followers along. It’s a miracle they didn’t all die.”
“They came close,” John said, setting the empty tray on the ground and taking his seat. “I was on my way to do some trading at Four Sisters, which was the hot mining play at the time. Would you believe there were almost three-hundred people, including babies and grandparents, all crammed into this ancient Horten freighter in Zero-G and puking their guts out all over each other? The cult had bought it as scrap in Earth orbit and they didn’t even do a basic refit. The real miracle is that the drive got them to the tunnel entrance.”
“What were they doing in the Four Sisters System?”
“Their leader had a vision that it was some kind of paradise. Can you imagine? They could easily have found a town in better shape than this one to take over right here on Earth and nobody would have said a thing about it. Instead, they begged, borrowed, or stole enough money for a flying piece of junk and headed for an asteroid belt where you have to pay for oxygen. Who knows why traffic control on this end even let them in the tunnel.”
“Out of sight, out of mind,” Ellen said philosophically. “Hey, this lasagna is really pretty good, but what does it have to do with the Ark?”
“So that’s the one thing they did right. The cultists had brought three months of freeze-dried rations up on the space elevator, though they barely had enough water to last a week, and the Horten recycling system was meant for a crew of at most a dozen. Bad show all the way around, but a few of us who were in the area got the people off before they ran out of air. I happened to be almost two-thirds empty at the time so I managed to cram forty-six people into the cargo hold. Even though it was only a six-hour trip to the elevator hub on Four Sisters Prime, it took a month to get the smell out.”
“That’s awful. What happened to them?”
“The Drazens brought them down to the surface and put them to work so they could
