“Mountain Man Gary? The guy with the mouse living in his beard who runs the Tall Tales competition?”
“He only does the mouse thing at Rendezvous. Try the green beans.”
“Thanks.” Ellen moved some green beans to her plate and then took a second helping of lasagna. “You know what? I think that the Ark might have put the whole Colony One thing on the map. It got a lot of play in the Galactic Free Press. Even though the cult was a joke, the idea of humans wanting to start a new colony somewhere rather than moving to established worlds with alien governments really resonated with some people. It’s been almost a century since the Stryx opened Earth and we haven’t done it yet.”
“That’s because we haven’t developed our own interstellar drive and the Stryx don’t connect tunnels to new systems until they’re economically viable. Hey, did you hear that?”
“Was it barking? Do you think there are wild dogs around here?”
“If there are, I don’t want to meet them, but it could be coyotes. My father said they were already a problem when he was still here.”
“I’m going to get my stunner,” Ellen said, rising from her place. “Back in a second.”
“Me too.”
The two returned to the table a few minutes later, each armed with a commercial-grade Dollnick stunner of the type favored by traders, and resumed their meal.
“So why don’t the Stryx connect tunnels to promising systems as they’re discovered?” Ellen asked. “I have to believe they would make their investment back in no time.”
“You really don’t know?” John paused with a forkful of green beans halfway to his mouth.
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“The only cost to the Stryx for opening new tunnels is the energy, and they seem to have infinite amounts of that. They wait until worlds are already terraformed and settled so they don’t put the colony ship industry out of business. Even the Stryx-subsidized teacher bots we grew up with are programmed so they only share the knowledge that humanity has already discovered for itself. The Stryx started the tunnel network to bring together the species that are willing to trade rather than fight, but they don’t want to destroy any existing industries. The one thing that all the biological species have in common is that without work, we tend to make problems.”
“My only problem is that you’ve been avoiding me the last few years.”
“You know why that is, Ellen. I can’t be around your drinking.”
“I’ve cut back on the hard stuff—I don’t even keep any on the ship anymore, except as trade stock.”
John looked at the half-empty bottle of wine sadly. “Let’s just say it didn’t work out between us and leave it at that.”
“I thought it was working out just fine.”
Six
“Lorper Orbital administration requesting navigation handover,” the ship’s controller announced.
“Close the hatch to the cargo deck and proceed,” Larry ordered the controller and looked over to see if the alarm buzzer would wake Georgia. “Are you still sleeping off that squeeze tube of baked scrod casserole?”
“I’m up, I’m up,” the reporter said, opening her eyes and staring in horror at a long thread of spittle that was floating just inches in front of her face. “Is that mine?”
“I wanted you to see what happens if you sleep with your mouth open in Zero-G,” Larry told her matter-of-factly. “Some traders who can’t break the habit wear a cloth surgical mask while they sleep just to save having to clean it up.”
“What if my drool had gotten into the electronics and shorted something out?”
“Humans couldn’t live in space if the equipment was that fragile. Everything on the bridge is rated for temporary submersion, but that doesn’t mean saliva won’t leave a sticky residue on the view screen. There’s a story about a rookie trader who burned through an entire fuel pack making course changes to avoid a navigation hazard that stayed right in front of his ship throughout evasive action.”
“You mean it was just gunk on the view screen? Did that really happen?”
“I doubt it. Traders tell lots of rookie stories like that, and the ship controller would have known better.”
“Are there paper towels somewhere, or do you have a vacuum cleaner?”
“It’s all vacuum outside. If you have a squeeze-tube disaster, we’ll go into the hold and seal the hatch, and then the controller can vent the bridge atmosphere through a filter. Nobody complains about dumping gases in space.” Larry corralled the long strand of free-floating spittle with a tissue, but instead of taking it to the garbage, he shoved it in a pocket and pulled himself back to his chair. “Buckle your safety harness for docking. It’s a Drazen regulation.”
“Got it. Hey, are we moving?”
“We’ve been moving for the last three days. You meant to ask if we’re accelerating.”
“My question stands.”
“That’s Lorper traffic control bringing us in with manipulator fields. None of the alien stations or orbitals allow ships to dock under the captain’s control, there’s just too much at stake. You slept through me giving up authority so the AI running Lorper could shut down all of our navigation controls and handle us directly.”
“I didn’t know the Drazens were big on AI.”
“They’re not, and some species actually handle traffic control with highly-trained technicians, but AI is a natural fit, and it’s good-paying work for them when they need the money. I hear
