“This is a Drazen orbital,” the younger woman told her. “Better luck next time.”
Georgia remained staring at the display panel for a full minute, but then the training she had put herself through by reading autobiographies of famous investigative journalists kicked in, and she circled back to the strip of pubs she had passed on the way to the exhibition hall. She picked one that wasn’t blasting loud music and was rewarded immediately. More than half of the people sitting at the tables sported name tags and were perusing glossy pamphlets that were being shared around from swag bags with the distinctive Colony One logo. The reporter ordered a pitcher of beer at the bar and then carried it over to a table where there were two open chairs.
“Is this seat taken?” Georgia asked nobody in particular after failing to draw the attention of any of the seminar goers.
“Were you planning to drink all of that yourself?” a man across the table with an empty glass inquired.
“I’m a sucker for quantity discounts,” she said, taking the seat since nobody objected. After pouring herself a short beer, she pushed the pitcher into the middle of the table where it didn’t remain for more than a second. “I take it you guys all went to the seminar?”
“I’d reserve a place on the Colony One ship right now if I could, but they aren’t selling,” the woman seated directly to her right said. She appeared to be flushed, but Georgia couldn’t tell whether it was from alcohol or the excitement of the presentation. “That doesn’t look like a seminar nametag,” the woman added, pointing to the reporter’s ID, and then to her own, which identified her as Deborah.
“No, these are my press credentials. I’m with the Galactic Free Press,” Georgia told them. “I came all the way here from Union Station to catch the seminar but I arrived too late.”
“Tough break,” said the first man who had helped himself to her beer and whose nametag identified him as Tom. “I can tell you that they sold me.”
“Sold you what, Tom?” Georgia asked eagerly.
“On the importance of humanity acquiring a colony ship and finding our own world somewhere. I’d heard rumors that EarthCent is working with the Drazens on some project to help us develop an interstellar drive, but even if we had one tomorrow, building a colony ship would take generations.”
“And don’t forget about all of the terraforming equipment, the gravity-drive shuttles, and all of the other scientific breakthroughs we haven’t made yet,” Deborah said. “I like the Dollnick colony ships,” she added, speaking directly to Georgia. “There’s already one hiring itself out to EarthCent, you know, but it’s some kind of special circumstance that doesn’t involve colonization. This booklet has pictures of all the colony ship types built by tunnel network members. You can keep it, I have two.”
“Thank you,” Georgia said. “It looks like an expensive printing job. How much did they charge?”
“These are all giveaways. There was a bag full of literature on every seat when we went in, but the kid next to me said that he only reads on tabs. Here, you can have the whole bag. I just didn’t want to see it go to waste.”
“That’s very generous of you. Everything was included with the entry fee then?”
“I only paid six creds to get in, and that included the meal at the end,” Tom said.
“Yeah, the food itself had to cost that much. They must have gotten the hall for free or something,” another man joined in.
“I waited in the corridor to talk with the last speaker,” said a slender woman whose nametag identified her as Isabel. “I wanted to make a contribution, but Farsight said they weren’t set up to accept cash.”
“Farsight?” Georgia asked.
“That’s his nom de guerre,” Isabell explained. “He wanted to take a name that meant something.”
“I don’t really know much about them because they haven’t visited Union Station,” the reporter said. “I’m working on a story—”
“That’s great,” Tom interrupted. “They need all the publicity they can get if we’re going to make this work. Colony One hasn’t even started fundraising yet, but when they do, it’s going to take trillions of creds. When you think about it, if every human worker in the galaxy just pledged a month or two of their earnings, we’d get there in no time.”
“And you’re ready to do that?” Georgia asked, belatedly pulling out her tab and opening the story-builder screen.
“You can quote me on it.”
Seven
The sprawling commercial center at the base of the North American continent’s space elevator was occupied primarily by wholesalers, exporters, and outfitters. A young boy showed Ellen how she could bring up an interactive map on the screen of the communications device she had purchased to contact journalists whose stories had been previously syndicated in the Galactic Free Press. She guessed that whoever was in charge of keeping the map up to date must have been on vacation because it still took her an hour to locate the fairgrounds set aside for small traders.
“Now I know why they call you a sell phone,” she barked at the device, which for some reason showed her current location as a parking garage for floaters. “I’ll sell you the first chance I get.”
“That’s cell phone, with a C,” a man sitting cross-legged on a blanket a few steps away informed her. “Are you lost?”
“I was looking for a place to spread my blanket and do a little trading, but this map function decided to give me a grand tour of the area instead,” Ellen replied. “So why do they call this thing a cell-phone-with-a-C?”
“It’s short for cellular telephone, and the connectivity is supplied by antennas on cellular towers. The problem is that the space elevator interferes with the
