 
The Storm Fishers and Other Stories

By

Everitt Foster

Copyright © Jason Everitt Foster, 2015

All characters and events in these stories are fictional and no semblance including name or description is intended.

Cover designed by Everitt Foster using GIMP and brushes by ObsidianDawn

The author can be contacted on Twitter @everittfoster or via email: ever.foster@gmail.com

For A.I.H.

Table of Contents

Gravity before Newton

A View without Seasons

Lomonosov's Drift

The Storm Fishers

Sheep Bite

GRAVITY BEFORE NEWTON

When Martian society was still young there lived a boy in love with the greatest heroes of Earth. His mother taught him to read using his father's biographies of Newton, Einstein, Faraday and Bohr. He didn't speak often, and went outside even less. He loved stories from Martian Geologic Magazine and he saw himself on the cover, leading a cadre of natives across mountains and canyons of distant and dangerous planets. The boy was short even for his age, and his sandy cowlick bounced side to side when he tried to run. One day, while still learning to write, he took a cardboard binder and scribbled "The Lif of Digby Futter, Sientis" in red washable marker on the cover and placed it on the shelf next to his father's biographies.

Digby lived in the corner unit of an apartment building at the intersection of Heisenberg Lane and Pauling Avenue. His bedroom window overlooked the botanical gardens where his father worked. And every day after school, when he heard the whistle blow, he would rush to the window, smush his face against the clear acrylic, and watch as men and women in white coats flowed from every side of the gardens onto the river blue pavement below.

His father, the garden's herpetologist, Master Albert Futter the third, wore a suit colored like the navy-violet crown lighting the skyline at sunset. Before leaving work Albert folded his lab coat over his shoulder so his son could spot him like an amethyst veined pebble tumbling to the sea, finally vanishing beneath the balcony of their building. And that was the cue for Digby to rush past the smell of dinner and slam open the front door for his father.

"Daaaaaaaad! I got a B- on my biology thingy. Tell me what I did wrong." Digby handed his father the exam.

"After dinner, okay?"

"You go to sleep after dinner. I want it now!"

Poor Albert sighed and took the exam to a cramped study. When dinner was set he came to the table, kissed Mrs. Sharon Futter good evening and sat forward so he could show Digby his mistakes.

"I don't feel like that was a mistake. I feel like you are wrong," Digby said when his father showed him how to solve a problem.

"Digby you know we respect your right to your own opinion and I'm thankful you question what you are told. But the fact is you're not entitled to your own facts."

Sharon plopped a second helping on her son's plate and before she could sit down the plate was empty and she was back at the stove to bring him a third. She sighed and her husband felt the frustration too.

The garden closed forever shortly before Digby graduated from advanced school. Albert and Sharon found themselves living on their retirement twenty years early. With the news came the talk. "We heard from Martian U. You were accepted, but without scholarship."

"They don't think I am able?" said Digby.

"No that's not it at all."

"Good. Because I know I am going to be great one day."

"We do too," his mother said. Digby puffed his chest out, swallowed his pride (like a Yale man realizing he didn't want to go to dumb old Harvard anyway) and said, "What about Newton?"

"I'm sorry no."

"No scholarship either huh? Well when they come a begging Dr. Futter for-"

"You weren't accepted." He cocked his jaw and drool ran down his mouth. His mommy wiped her boy's chin with her handkerchief.

"What about Faraday?"

"We can't afford the cost of living on a geosynched station."

"What about..." his eyes darted back and forth, "Mmmmm mmmm Martian Massive. It's funded by some research grant from some pharma company."

"We think you should look for work and wait until you're cerebral cortex has finished developing before you continue you're studies," his mother said.

"Daaaaa-AAAAAA-aaaaaa-AAAAAAd!"

"I'll be taking a position with the quarry preservation service. Maybe I can get you on-"

"No I am going to be a great scientist not a garbage man!"

"Your mother found freelance work editing the Journal of Theoretical Cosmology, maybe she can get-"

He shook his head slowly, winced, frowned and walked away, slamming his bedroom door behind him.

"I'll tell him when dinner is ready. I hoped he would eat something before we gave him the news" his mother said as she set the robotic chef to 'Old Fashioned Terran Comfort Food.'

After dinner Albert went to the balcony, resting his legs in his grandfather's woodensque rocking chair and watched the moons eclipse the distant Sun.

"Are you really going to take a job outside of the sciences?" The glass door slid too, hiding his mother's ears. Digby sat next to his father.

"No job is outside the sciences. I just won't be wearing a lab coat to work every day."

"What am I supposed to do when everyone I know goes off to college and I end up working as a quantum mechanic at some reactor station? The girls'll fly by and I'll be stuck alone taking orders from some starborn businessman from the peanut gallery."

"Stop it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. There are people on planets with a lot less than we have. I worked my way through college with night shifts as a volumetric meat and bun inspector for the Authority of Health and Diet." Digby snickered and his father leaned forward, "It's an important job."

"Yea, without you hotdogs wouldn't have been bun length and burger patties would have been too big for the toppings."

"There is no such thing as undignified work."

"But I want to be a great scientist. I've got the plan all mapped out." Digby took out his projection pad, pressed the archive button and before their eyes stood holograms of Digby and Albert ten years earlier.

"First you'll graduate near the top of your class," said his father's younger voice ringing with a metallic echo from the used projection pad's crackling stereo.

"Then you'll go to either Newton or Faraday."

"Then will I be a great scientist?" Digby's voice had changed little since he was a boy.

"Greatness comes with perseverance, brilliance and a touch of luck. We control only the first."

The projection ended. Digby said again, "Are you going to give up on me?"

"We haven't given up on you. We believe in you-"

"Good because I would hate to add you and mom to my enemies list."

"We should have named you Millhouse or Mortimer."

"I'm going to be great. I even know what field I'll revolutionize first."

"It's not whale-o-metrics is it?"

"No it's not whale-o-metrics."

"Good. Because ever since your grandfather's experiments the government has forbid stacking whales end on end for the purpose of measuring mountain height."

Digby mumbled under his breath, "Then how are we supposed to measure the height of skyscrapers."

"Go to your room."

"Before I die, some corner of science will be to Futter what gravity was to Newton."

Before bedtime Digby made a quick stop in the sanitation room. He drew a bath, filled it with bubbly soap and Epsom salts to sooth his agitated meat. He plopped down, his sides squeaking as they displaced water onto the floor, fitting snug as a plug in a jug. When he could no longer hear his parents chattering he pushed his hands past his love handles coated his palm with bubbles, imagined his trip to Sweden to accept the Nobel committee's award for scientific discovery. He imagined gorgeous beaches, wonderfully quaint old town squares, chesty blonde women jealous of his statuesque wife, and relaxed for a whole two minutes before bedtime.

Three months later Digby had found his own employment, and two weeks after he had rented a small apartment south of Forrest S. McCartney Starport. The flat-space engines caused a drone which was loud and regular and shook his tiny apartment, sometimes knocking his portrait gallery off the wall. Newton usually hit the ground before Leibniz.

During one of the year end parties Digby had met a pretty accounting apprentice with sunburn colored hair named Aventine. She was starborn and fascinating to Futter's colonist mind. He fell hard when she told him of her bug hunts growing up aboard the IRV ROBERT HOOKE, he fell deeper when she described her family's vacations in the Kaiper Belt. But it was the funny stories from the scientific community of the Silicon Hills that ignited true love.

Shortly after a hasty romance , well, Rosalind Franklin Marie Futter was a healthy 9lb 4oz baby girl. After the wedding ceremony Digby and Aventine found stable employment from Master Egbert Pud, a moonie from Phobos who never got past orbit, which paid enough to put a down payment on a four room house. The house sat on a cycad shaded street in the Faraday Station neighborhood adjacent to Schirra Academy, a great school by any measure, and across from Gus Grissom Park. Most importantly, the construction agent included a four-hundred cubic meter shed with a fixed foundation in back. Most young families opted for the sunning station, but to keep the peace Aventine acquiesced to what some readers would recognize as a 'man cave.'

Eleven years and two children, Rose and Felix, later the Futters purchased the fueling station from Master Pud for what they considered a low price. Pud retired and within the year they discovered the Planetary Planning Commission had diverted traffic to the gas giants away from Phobos to a state of the tech full service terminus capable of sling shotting ships through the asteroid belt. This left Digby with enough time to remember his dreams.

One day, not so long after the traffic was redirected and the filling station was overpassed, Digby found himself in an empty garage alone with classic ships in need of repair.

"A scientist without equipment. Might as well be an artist without a paintbrush," he said to his construction bot.

"That's a false analogy," said the bot.

"Shut up Rusty."

Digby strolled along wooden scaffolding. He stopped under the cathedral sized window and let the light cover his face. The warmth saved the moment in his wetware and he enhanced the memory by caressing the undercarriage of the Virgin Express transport, Coventry. The red paint chipped off the ceramic shell. He flicked a few more flakes as the hangar bay rumbled. He looked up and thought - maybe? Someone needs me?

Nope.

Doppler Effect.

Just that instant the oxidized chain holding the compressor rack over his egg shaped head snapped and a bronze nut bonked his noggin then plunged to the fracked concrete. He was safe of course; however, the 2500kg compressors smashed on the ground below. Aventine rushed from the office just in time to duck a flying hose slapping the wall.

"Haven't you been keeping up with maintenance?" Digby and Rusty rolled the canisters back on the loading scaffold.

"I do my best sunny bunny."

"He likes to sit in the payload bay and ride the mechanical arm all afternoon."

"Weasel." He held his head down bringing up the next compressor.

"What in the Oort cloud impelled you to ignore the shop?"

Digby pushed the tanks back in place. It cleared his mind. Then a spark of knowledge. Surely this is what Euripides felt.

Obviously, every action there is a reaction.

If he wasn't so tired every morning he could have come in fresh with his mind pushing his body to work. But he didn't. His negligence was inevitable, derived from preceding events. Therefore the crash wasn't his fault at all. Eureka!

He rushed to his workbench and grabbed an old fashioned pad and pen.

1. I cannot count on new business, therefore I work hard to keep customers.

2. Established customers were kept happy discussing 'the good old days of exploration and adventure'.

3. Therefore keeping up on the past is as much my job as much as working as a quantum mechanic.

4. This chain of events led to the negligence that led to the snapped chain that caused the nut to doink my head.

He signed it and titled it, 'The First Law of Fate.' Think of the far reaching implications of Futter's First Law. Think of the future, the grants, the statue in Grissom Park. No Grissom isn't big enough.

Maxwell Station. No.

Interplanetary Research Vessel Futter.

That'll do. Everyone starts somewhere.

Futter grabbed his Oppenheimer style hat and jacket and yelled as he dashed past Aventine's office, "I have to get to the tinker shed. Take a cab honey!"

Aventine looked on yelling into her cell, "swing by the market and pick up a few-"

He switched off the receiver. Small matters for small minds, he thought. All great theories must undergo rigorous contemplation.

"Day One, Test One" he scribbled on page one of a fresh journal. Futter developed a love for 'old timey' methods such as writing in notebooks with fountain pens and drinking from glass bottles. It was the first day of Founders Festival and the summer sunrise was due in under an hour, but Digby awoke early and brought the children along as assistants. Felix Futter's was five years old and had recently learned to hate waking up on time for school. Rose, who had long been her father's protege, did not feel the need for a third pair of hands on this experiment. But she strained to pull a red Radio Flyer bounding against the neighbor's driveway as the magnets holding it aloft strained under the weight. Beneath the sheet came a scratch and a sneeze and some snorting. A furry twitching nose peeked under the cloth. Felix reached out to pet the whiskers and the nose shot backwards.

"Make him help."

"It's so soft."

"Dad make the nose gremlin help!" yelled Rose.

"Come feel," Felix said.

"Did you at least check my homework?" she said under her breath.

Futter stood like the Colossus over Rhodes, looked to the rising sun, raised his hand, cleared his voice and spoke, "Perhaps his curiosity will lead him to greatness. What he does is beyond my control."

"It wasn't beyond your control when you grounded me from the mathletes," she said.

"That's not the same thing. This is about fate."

"Maybe it's fate that you fail to prove the laws of fate on account of a paint chip eating kid?" He thought of Newton; he would not become Leibniz. He waived at Felix. "Help your sister get him on the flatbed."

The "him" in question was a martian hopper with a collar around its furry neck that read 'Nobit. If found return to Drs. R.T. and Calinda Mudfoot - Number 487, Faraday Station; Caution: very affectionate.' The Martian hopper was a genetically engineered rabbit designed for non-terran, non-support ship human consumption. It looked much like a terran rabbit but it was about three meters long, twitchy nose to hyper twirly tail, one and a half meters at the shoulder, razor like teeth for nibbling the fast growing coniferous trees placed on Mars during terraformation. This particular hopper had been bred Martian pink with ice blue stripes in its fur. It was the last clause that allowed Futter and his assistants to get Nobit out of his cage and onto the flatbed. The bunny chased Felix around the Mudfoot's lawn until Digby leashed the speedy little bugger. When all was secure in the flatbed Digby threw a bundle of cycad branches in the back and said, "Every ten meters or so toss a few leaves into the street."

Shortly, they arrived on the edge of Keyserling Forest, a nature preserve near the edge of the station. Digby turned down a vehicle access trail and continued on until he discovered a clearing. Rose led the hopper off the flatbed by holding a fresh cycad while Felix crawled on Nobit's back, riding him like a racecraft.

"We'll lead him up the big piney tree with the branch that stretches over the fence separating the park from the zoo. Then he'll get hungry, bend over the fence and find himself unable to get back up without assistance."

"Won't he starve?" asked Felix holding Nobit's aerodynamic ears.

"Excellent observation! But no, that's the point. The Mudfoots will find him in a few hours. Maybe a few days. And if they don't find him the zookeepers will. You see kids we are going to demonstrate that when the right conditions are in place behavior becomes inevitable. In this way we'll be able to predict accurately the exact nature and outcome of human behavior. Given the right conditions - fate will intervene. Inevitability."

"In game theory our teacher said us nobody does what you think they will," said Rose.

"Your teacher doesn't have a real degree honey, that's why she's a teacher not a scientist."

"I looked in your journal last night. I don't think you're doing it right."

Felix was rubbing Nobit around the eyes making him mep and purr. He seemed to smile looking at the children.

"It's science. Maybe you'll understand when you're older."

Digby stood in the rising light of the sun and handed Rose the leash and his journal while he shimmied up the tree.

"Write this down for me honey. Once we have the Mudfoot hopper in position we can observe several inevitable things-"

"He looks too big for that tree branch dad."

"-first we can predict his owners will look for him. Based on his size they will look for him in areas with a lot of space. Second based on his diet they will look for him in wooded areas. Finally based on the trail we left they will look west. The discovery of specimen 'Nobit' will likely occur by the end of the day. When he is discovered will be able to say the law of Special Fate, maybe I should call it Special Inevitability, is in fact, true."

The hopper was balanced on the branch over the zoo. Below were dozens of animals including a congress of ridgeback bone lizards. Most were asleep. But a few, with disturbingly sharp teeth, looked up at the bunny, probably deciding how to divvy up the pieces. Suddenly came the zookeepers' voices. Digby panicked, unhooked the leash and said, "They shouldn't be here so early. Rose go get the flatbed and move it towards me so I can jump."

"My feet won't reach the pedals!" There were strange noises from the zoo. And even stranger noises from the park.

"Felix press the long flat pedal for your sister." He tried to shout and whisper and it didn't work. There was no response and Digby couldn't see his son anywhere.

"Felix where are you?"

"Here I am!" he shouted, still riding the bunny waving to an imaginary crowd.

"Son get down and help your sister." He looked up and rolled his eyes. "Never mind."

"No- you said we could go to the park and play with the hopper next door."

"We are playing."

"I want to play some more!"

"Well I want to get home and not be eaten alive."

Digby heard the engine flush with fuel and a thud shook the tree. Both he and Felix fell onto the bed of leaves in the flatbed. Rose waved at them with a stick in one hand and the wheel in her other. "I did it! Did you see?"

Dad skittered off the platform and bounced behind the wheel. "You did good. I'll teach you how to drive when you don't need this." He threw the stick out the window where, as he drove away, it hit the roof of a sandstone den. Once the Futters were gone a large wild three-toed napping pig waddled out of the den, yawning and snorting and licking his carnivore teeth.

As Digby drove home he passed an assembly of neighbors on the Mudfoot's lawn, he jumped about in the seat and his palms sweat in nervous excitement. Aventine walked back to her lawn and as her husband and exhausted children walked towards front door she said, "The hopper RT and Calinda were going to prepare for the Founder's Day dinner escaped. Do you want to help look for it?"

Felix's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Before he could make a sound Digby covered his son's mouth and cleared his throat. "No the kids are a little tired right now I think."

"No we're not."

Aventine's eyes squinted and she shooed the children into the house.

"What did you do my darling?"

"Science." He walked behind the kids and Aventine followed. "I'm going to my laboratory to keep an eye on the news feeds. We'll still have dinner. But it might be, will be, a little late. And if all works out, tonight will be more than an anniversary party."

Digby watched the feeds all day. Aventine kept the children out of school and kept them occupied with print version of The Old American Explorers Zoological Guide to Teraforming. Though Aventine had intended the book to be a Curiosity Day present, for her husband's sake she let the kids unwrap it a day early. The distraction worked, but every hour or so, when Digby came in to steal a snack, she said under her breath, "Science or no, if that thing isn't discovered before sundown you'll march over to Calinda and apologize to her for wrecking the neighborhood dinner." During his final trip she informed him, "The kids are banned from anymore of your shed bred, garage born, piss poor vectored 'experiments' again."

The more Digby watched the Authorized Martian News wire the deeper he fell into a funk. He flipped back and forth between their other two channels over and over expecting more. Unfortunately his choices were limited to 'Whose Baby Was It?,' which the Uncommon Knowledge Channel had renewed for a forty first season, and the Explorer Channel's marathon of 'Deep Space Law' which featured overzealous Asteroid Authority Rangers chasing toothless bootleggers on the edge of the solar system. The documentaries on Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of the Firefly were often called 'the last good step and the first bad step' in the Explorer Channel's descent. Aventine's criticism stung when she spoke with her starborn accent, like a sunburn reminding Digby of brighter days, and an almost perfect life. Night fell and the Futter's ate rehydrogenated dinners on their coffee table watching the AMN's hard-hitting debate on which flowers will look best this winter. Digby just poked at his food before throwing it out.

After midnight the search party returned with a flatbed hovering across the Mudfoot lawn to the cage in their backyard. There were no news crews, no celebrations. And therefore no prizes for uncovering a most fundamental law of the universe. Aventine sent the kids to bed and stood next to her husband on the veranda as a small team unloaded the hopper with the care of a shuttle payload crew.

"What happened?" Aventine yelled to Calinda. "Where did you find it?"

She yelled back, "He was stuck up a tree in Keyserling Park."

Digby said, in a voice as timid as a puppy asking for a treat, "What, eh, what, eh, what led you to him?"

"A zookeeper spotted a pack of three toed napping pigs under a large tree in the park. We put two and two together and figured this had to be him."

"Oh. Well, I hope everyone is alright."

"No harm, but a scissor tusk took a chunk out of RT's arm. Came out of nowhere in the forest."

Aventine shouted, "Good night. We'll see you tomorrow."

"You're not going to tell them are you? Please don't tell them."

"No. You are."

"What if he presses charges?"

"I'm not going to do this anymore. You apologize to them and offer to help cook the hopper and maybe they'll understand why you did it."

Digby didn't sleep. When he heard Aventine brushing her teeth that morning he shuffled over to the Mudfoot back porch. Calinda smiled and opened the latch.

"The missus thinks I should come over and apologize for wrecking your barbecue."

"You?" said RT.

"Yea."

"Why?"

"You're not gonna report me for petnapping are you?"

"As long as you tell us why. You're not one of the tech-skeptics are you? You didn't try to liberate him right?"

"No no nothing like that at all! I love science. I was trying to conduct my own experiment. That's all. He was never in any danger."

"Except for the scissortooth and the three toed napping pigs," said Callinda.

"Well, that wasn't part-" he thought of the implications of finishing that thought.

He pulled a chair from their table. The scent of onions and garlic imported from private gardens hung in the air, sweet steam waved through the kitchen and pink flesh marinated in exotic spices. He stared at the wooden table, and could not look either Mudfoot in the eyes.

"See over there," he pointed, "that's my tinker shed. I call it a laboratory but-. I've wanted to be a scientist my whole life and I have so many tree books and paper maps in there. You should see 'em. You can if you want. Some have been drawn on by India ink pens."

"I take your word for it."

"Sometimes, I sit in my lounger and read about the old days and wonder what it must have felt like to see the Earth from the Moon or Mars for the first time ever. I think 'that was when the sky was still new' and I imagine what it'll be like when we pass the cloud and move out of the solar system. And that makes me sad, because I know it won't be me. I'll never see it. As I get older, I think how proud the parents of those explorers and scientists must have been. Then I look at my kids and-. Well you've seen 'em. My son is a lovable little ball of good, but he eats paint and thinks he's a racecraft driver. And my daughter is interested but lazy and easily distracted by anything shiny. Her mom says she's half mapgie."

"So you stole the neighborhood dinner?" said RT.

"I came up with a theory and I wanted to test it."

"We don't test theories we test hypotheses. That was your first mistake."

"You're a scientist?"

"We both are," said RT.

"But you live next door to me."

"I'm a geologist with the Foundry and she's in ergonomic psychology. Tell me what your hypothesis is. I'm curious."

"I don't think that's a good idea. Look what happened to Rosalind Franklin."

Calinda slung her marinade covered hands toward the sink, "The fact that you know her name means in the long run, truth comes to light. So what is your idea?"

"Promise you won't steal credit?"

"Neither of us would do that. Besides science is open, not cloistered in a shed."

"Well I have this idea, Fate before Futter is like Gravity before Newton."

"What does that mean?" said RT.

Digby explained as he helped the Mudfoots carry meat out to the barbecue pits and stoke the coals. Calinda held his hand as he talked about how long he wanted to do something important and said, "I understand. And we forgive you for pinching the dinner." RT rushed over with a huge smile and hugged both his wife and neighbor.

"So you'll help me?"

"Here is the problem." Digby's brow furrowed and his nose twitched when RT spoke. "This General and Special Fate, it's not a valid hypothesis. I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"Real science is open and testable, you got those parts right, but also falsifiable."

"I don't know that word, but it sounds familiar." Digby squinted and rubbed his chin as if a colleague was explaining new research using words to be looked up in private.

"Think of it like this, if I say there is such a thing as gravity and drop this pin and say 'Voila! Gravity exists!' have I demonstrated gravity exists?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes?" Digby's brow furrowed with a touch of embarrassment.

"Look, what if I claim the same pen is maneuvered around the atmosphere by glowing green faeries. Then when I drop it I yell 'Voila faeries exist!' have I verified the existence of faeries?"

"Of course not."

"Right, we test not to prove but to attempt to disprove a hypothesis."

"So you understand now?" said Calinda.

"Yes. As the great Sherlock Holmes once said, once you've eliminated all possible alternatives, whatever is left, however unbelievable must be correct."

The Mudfoots looked at the crowd forming on their back lawn. Their eyes met, they shrugged in the silent couple's language saying, "close enough."

'Day 3, Test 2' he put the pen down then snatched it up again. 'Maybe after testing concludes, and awards are handed out, create petition to change the date nomenclature to BF and AF? It would certainly clean things up.' he scribbled in the margin.

The next day Digby left before sunrise and was gone all afternoon, arriving home well into the celebration. He walked with his chin high and went right for his shed. With the door closed and his palms sweating he made some further notes next to a drawing of a remote control, and beneath that were several pages formatted like a screenplay. He wrote: "expected reaction, momentary panic and chaos, followed by peace and applause."

There was a knock on his door and Calinda yelled, "Come out, come out tinkermouse!" He kept working but laughter and joy invaded his lab, as did music and sweet smells. Digby stuffed the journal and a remote control under his jacket and sunk out across his lawn. It was nearly sundown on the last day of the Founders Festival. Most of Faraday Station gathered around the Mudfoot home to grab the last of Nobit, tell a few jokes , share garage brewed beers, and watch the New Year arrive together.

Digby laid an extension ladder against his house and climbed to the roof where Aventine and the children had assembled a blanket, an old umbrella and a few food trays.

"Weren't you going to wait for me?"

"I felt like you were going to hide in your shed all night." She made him a plate.

"I was working on something." He snatched his dinner from her hand and dug in.

"Sorry for assuming."

As the Sun fell and the stars came out more people migrated to their roofs and the neighborhood shushed as much as a festival could. First came the slow rise of classical instruments turning in the distance.

"We have a good enough life together, don't we?" Aventine said.

Digby put the plate down, gulping his last bite as he fished a pair of small speakers from the picnic basket. The turning continued, and he fiddled with the knobs clearing away the static. The crackling finished just as the orchestra played the triumphant first notes of The Battle Hymn of Tharsis Montes. Looking across the neighborhood roofs one would see many Martians bowing their heads, a few veterans standing and saluting the sky, as if they themselves had served at the time of the Founding, and fewer still folding their arms, enduring the anthem.

Red lasers created a proscenium above the station. With slow and deliberate motion, a point of light, blinking like a cursor, drew the stoic faces every Martian school child memorized. The music changed and the dot was joined by more dots and with invisible speed they created, in three dimensions, the setting of the Food Riots. When fighting erupted music and lasers were joined by fireworks. After the riots came the story of the raid on Galapagos Ridge where the rebels fought the Martian Authority. Then came the raising of the flag at the Victoria Crater Spaceport. The story moved some to tears. A few, including Rose, had fallen asleep during the political explanations. Digby held Felix on his lap and whispered to him explaining an alternate version of history while a newly awakened Rose sent messages to her friends every twenty blooping seconds.

Aventine smiled to herself watching Digby and Felix. She tapped Rose on the shoulder and said, "Go tell your father what you came up with this afternoon."

She shook her head no, and went back to the light show.

"This is the part they always get wrong. The rebels weren't doing anything wrong. They were just hungry and looking for some scraps to sell so they could eat," said Digby. He shoved Felix off his lap and took up the remote control.

"What are you doing hon?"

"Science."

Aventine sighed, "Kids get off the roof, your father and I are going to have a married people discussion."

Digby flipped a switch and the remote dashboard lit up.

"I can't do this anymore."

Fingers on the pitch and yaw controls, thumbs on throttle and parachute.

"Please put that down and talk to me."

Blue and red explosions reflected in her eyes; her last ounce of hope followed his arm point to the sky.

"Watch."

The explosions over the rebels never occurred. Instead the rebels turned and fired on the Martian Authority. The uniformed soldiers turned and ran down the banks of the crater, the rebels chasing and shooting, fireworks overhead began exploding in unpredictable ways. They exploded closer and closer to the surface in chaotic patterns.

Then came laughter and applause and a voice over the sound system.

"We would like to apologize for the disruption folks. Some practical joker has taken advantage of our open RF frequency. Things will be normalized momentarily."

The fallout streamed closer to the ground and people stopped laughing. The dashboard was still lit, but the controls didn't respond.

"What did you do?"

"I didn't think they would get control back so soon."

Fire streamed down the sky like striations around an impact site. He smashed the parachute button. But it didn't work.

Then came screams.

Flame and detritus cascaded across the neighborhood. People jumped from their roofs and rushed inside their homes. Neighborhood automated sprinklers shot up extinguishing many of the fires. Husbands and wives rushed their children into fallout shelters as roofs ignited in the dry summer night. Some houses collapsed under flame. Others were new enough to be constructed from fire retardant materials. A cohort of firebots zipped across the treetops shooting foam from fire to fire.

"We've got it under control folks. So sorry about the interruption. The Martian Fire Authority is already out and so too shall be those fires," said the voice on the speakers.

The firebots hovered over the Mudfoot home shooting a wide arc of foam on the roof. RT and Calinda held each other standing on the front lawn. Digby ran to their side. The house shifted and the roof fell in. The veranda collapsed tearing the kitchen open. The family room still stood alone in the center. But the walls were charred and sundered.

The firebots left when the damage had been contained.

The Futter home was safe.

Digby dropped the remote. "I didn't think there would be so many- I didn't think they would be stupid enough to try and take control back."

An engine revved. He looked over his shoulder in time to see Aventine had loaded the children in the flatbed and launched off without a goodbye. Moments later the Martian Authority arrived. A circle had formed around the Mudfoot house watching RT, Calinda and Digby stand motionless and speechless.

"Sir, is this your remote control?" said the officer.

Digby breathed deep, turned to the officer and said, "Yes. I am the man who conducted tonight's experiment. Digby Futter is the name, I kept careful notes and am willing to speak with your most esteemed scientific minds regarding-" and he extended his hand.

"We got him," the officer said pressing his ear-piece. His partner cuffed Digby. "Wait, what is the meaning of this?!"

"You're under arrest for arson, signal interference and bot-jacking."

"I'm not under arrest. It was a scientific experiment!" Digby looked at the Mudfoots and said, "Tell them it was a valid experiment. Please. Please tell them. The experiment was open and repeatable and I took notes. Just like in real science. Those are the homeowners, they're friends of mind." When his words failed he plead with his eyes. He even thought, just for a moment, of offering to share credit.

Calinda dropped RT's hand and walked toward the remains of their garage.

"My wife and I are going to the Foundry and then to our home ship. I hope one day you'll learn from your well-meaning mistakes. It's taking everything in me to forgive you. And we do, we both forgive you. But you are not our friend."

At the courthouse people peaceably lined the streets to watch, mock or pity Digby Futter. Doctors and Engineers took the day off, schools watched on closed circuit intranet connections. Even janitors and merchants and quantum mechanics, hoping their children would one day be doctors and engineers and scientists, all stopped to watch the Arsonist of Faraday Station strut, in a brand new suit, nose so high one would think he was starborn, from jail to judge's bench.

The court held a full audience. Behind the defendant's bench sat Alfred and Sharon enduring the gaze of eye and lens. Digby looked at his father and felt like he had written the first chapter in "The Life of Digby Futter, Scientist" and was proud his father sat front row.

When asked how he plead he stood, cleared his throat and said, "I plead not guilty by reason of Special Inevitability."

"That's not a valid plea. Guilty, innocent or incompetent. Those are your options," said the judge.

"Not guilty by reason of Special Inevitability."

The young judge glanced at Futter's lawyer and sighed. The lawyer cocked his head with pity, turned to the judge and shrugged.

The judge thought a moment and said, "Times like these the law allows a little leeway. When it is obvious the accused is seriously ill the court may come to a decision on his behalf. Is that understood Mr. Futter?"

Digby steadied his posture, stared at the cameras and said, "SPE-cial. In-EV-i-TA-bility."

"Should we just go with incompetent?" said the judge in a kind and exhausted voice.

"Unless the law allows one to plead 'Dumbass,' it'll have to."

"Incompetent he is."

"No!" Futter jumped up and down with both feet, gritting his teeth.

"Son sit down!"

"But. Dad."

"I am ashamed to be called your father. For the first time in my life I'm ashamed of my son."

"I only wanted to make our name famous. Centuries from now they'll say 'Fate before Futter was like gravity before Newton.'"

"Sheriffs," the judge slammed his gavel over and over, "Sheriffs! Subdue the accused and prepare my hair and makeup." The judge announced to the audience, "You'll all be pleased to know I've decided to upload a behind the scenes video commentary after court."

"No. The laws of inevitably and fate are real! Judge you're jealous and you want to take my credit. I saw it coming from a parsec out. It was inevitable my experiments led us here. And uh, um, uh, I thought the experiment—"

"—arson-"

"—experiment! Would result in inevitable social change when people realized we could control our own fate by adjusting a few simple behavioral variables. It was a perfectly executed experiment. Today was inevitable." The sheriffs finally wrestled him to the ground.

"Just like your wife moving back in with her mother was inevitable?" said the judge to the cameras and smiled.

"Is that where she went?" Futter stopped fighting back.

"Wasn't it inevitable?" And the audience laughed with the judge.

"Take him away."

The world revved back to work as Futter was led back to the jail house. The sheriff sat him on the bench adjacent to the front desk for a moment, and wandered off to drop an asteroid in the porcelain crater. People came and went ignoring Digby. He looked over at the desk and saw the electronic key. The clerk had left it just within reach. This couldn't be chance. From the beginning of his life, this moment was inevitable.

A VIEW WITHOUT SEASONS

From the full sized starboard windows of The Flower of Kent a cascade of starlight fell like gold and crimson leaves caught in a September wind across the tinted glass illuminating the entire pod. Undulating waves of light crept down the dust colored wall and flowed across the dark wooden floor. When the ship listed, the view of the Sun lit the room like dawn, noon and dusk all at once. When the Sun had passed the family room faded to black until the next revolution.

Pitch Outcrop had tried to replicate his wife's eye for design, at least until Ingot was old enough to understand. A pulsing hum penetrated the dense acrylic walls, a row of silver streamers waved in front of the cool air from the rebreather vent. The circulation stirred the smell of orange, pepper and peach through the pod. Pitch had left a one-shift-pot of coastal stew on the stove top to welcome Inga home from school on that specific afternoon. Beside the stew was a note. She never noticed the notes preferring to pour herself a bowl, rush to the family library, and thumb through the books from the old world.

Pitch would be home soon and she could always ask him what the letter said then.

Ingot's best friend from school, Kelvin Slurry, had curly black hair that seemed matted to his head, he wore long eyed glasses that had been long out of style, he dug for nose gremlins when he thought she wasn't looking. Inga, as her father sometimes called her, was curious. She was always looking at something. Kelvin came up to the Outcrop family's pod a little later than usual, given that school had just let out. She poured him a bowl before they disappeared into the library.

The Slurry family worked in excavation, sifting through minerals for building materials. As such they took trips to the surface of Earth quite often. Kelvin often returned with small souvenirs smashed from sandstone. One time he brought an imprint of a nautilus to class. Its diameter was larger than any of the fifth grade hands that passed it around. Once, after his family returned from what was called mainland China he brought Inga a violet and crimson geode. It flashed to a heliotrope when she held it to the lamp overhead and smiled. But she protested, "I can't take that. It's too valuable." He insisted, "They're everywhere. It's nothing. I can find hundreds of them. Thousands. They're all over the place down there." After two days of asking she finally relented. She never saw Kelvin with anything as beautiful again.

The Outcrop family pod, docked at a lower deck reserved for the mudfoot class, had five comfortably sized rooms (that's the more polite starborn term) including an old world repository of antiques. College boys collect bottle caps, businessmen collect fine shoes and ties, machinists collect pictures of vehicles they'll never own.

Pitch collected memories.

Some of his family, some of a past not his. At the center of the room was an antique writing desk and a deep red leather chair embossed with an unfamiliar design and finished with brass tacks. On the far wall hung a massive map of the world in Magellan's day. Tree books encircled the room on two walls. When Kelvin visited he always noticed the geode laying under covered glass on a shelf too high to reach without the stepladder.

Depending on whom one asked Pitch's love was for a past that never existed except in legend. And he had passed his love for the golden age of science and exploration on to Inga. After her first day of school she returned to the pod to find a photo gallery of great minds hanging on her light blue wall. She put Faraday at the center. She was fond of mimicking her father when he said, "Newton laid the foundation, but all modern knowledge flows from Faraday."

The front door slid open and Pitch shouted to Ingot, "Did you eat already?"

Kelvin rushed through the family room and out the door before her dad could wave goodbye. Inga ported both empty bowls straight through to the kitchen. Pitch caught up with her, and put away the bowls himself. He gave her a kiss on the top of her short haired blonde head.

"Argh dad knock it off!"

"Too old to say hello to your father?"

"Hello."

"I take it Kelvin brought you another dinosaur bone?"

"No we were looking at the old maps of the solar system."

"Did you eat enough supper?"

"Yes," she had become more curt as she recognized the limits of her father's ability to speak her language. That familiar emptiness returned, the absence she felt while decorating her room. She kept adding posters, the great scientists; adding figures, the funny old maps; adding music, even music about the princess in the high castle. The emptiness never left. She snapped at her father believing he didn't see the void she saw.

"Maybe we could have some cookies," he said.

"Only if they are those cinnamons you make." She handed him her grandmother's cookbook with leaflets stained yellow from years of butter and flour. She wasn't too old to spend the evening making cookies with dad, and that made him smile, though she rarely saw.

"Why is this called cinnamon?" she said stirring the tan mixture.

One of the most important lessons Pitch taught her was no question is ever off limits.

"Why is a dinosaur called a dinosaur?" Easy one.

"What makes some flowers white and some pink and some both?" A little harder. But Silt, the grandfatherly horticulturist next door, told the neighborhood kids about Mendel and the punnit square.

"How does carbon come from hydrogen." That took some thought, not because it was difficult. Indeed it was right in his wheelhouse, being a core scientist, but how to explain quantum mechanics to someone barely old enough for physical chemistry. Einstein said if you can't explain it to your grandmother you don't really understand it. But of course Bohr said, if you think you understand quantum mechanics you don't understand quantum mechanics. Pitch elegantly said, "Well honey, there is a lot of gravity and electricity, then boom! Like a baby, a carbon pops out."

But questions about cinnamon (or what's in cheezie bites or what makes poop purple sometimes, hint: it's the cheezie bites) made him regret, for just a half a second, that lesson.

"Um. Cinnamon. It sounds like a word from the Indian subcontinent."

Ingot was good at questions. But Pitch had become adept at distracting her, "So you never told me if Kelvin brought you a dinosaur bone." At least she didn't ask about her life before her memories formed.

"He didn't bring me anything."

"He didn't bring you anything this time. Don't play. I know where you get your little artifacts," he tossed a sprinkle flour in her blond hair. She shook it out with a touch of annoyance in her voice, "Daaaaaad."

The timer dinged and he pulled the first sheet of cookies from the oven and the cinnamon flowed through the house, hovering in the air way past Inga's bedtime.

So continued their lives until one day a wave came over the satellite. The Flower of Kent would be intercepting the IRV Rosalind's Credit. They were set to rendezvous in forty eight hours. They would dock for twenty hours that would be long enough to resupply the research ship and exchange physical data too sensitive to transmit via satellite.

Down in the core an excited energy broke out from the news. The Credit had a reputation so illustrious scientists waited decades for approval for the transfer. Gossip spread. People wondered whether a new project had been selected for research. Pitch fell back on his reclining chair, cupped his hands over his mouth, and let his face fall towards the ground. After a long time the celebration settled, but the energy did not. Pitch asked for permission to check his communications.

"You're expecting someone from the Credit?" his supervisor said holstering his voltmeter.

"I. Ah. There is a message I never responded too, and I would like to do that now. Before we dock."

He sat before the recorder and shut the compartment for privacy. At least one hundred people stood in line behind him. He felt the pressure like he felt the heat from bodies piled into a transmission room made to hold half the number. He began recording.

Silence and more silence. He tried again. And again silence. He couldn't even make his voice groan. He tried again.

"I should have responded sooner. But, what do you say to a message like that? I don't know. Maybe time has patched old wounds. And I'm sorry. But I want you to see us again. If not for me then at least for Ingot. If you get this. You'll get this before we dock," he was too nervous to ask, his hands and arms shivered, "meet me at the old Cold War Era malt shop 'Tesla's Backyard.' You remember where it is. I hope."

After school that day Pitch sent Inga to stay with the Dross' family. Doctor Dross had a wonderful polarizing microscope and a set of at least a thousand mineral slides. The doctor had his daughters and Inga drawing the crystals and identifying angles for a few hours. Neither party minded as spinning the slide gave a gorgeous heliotropic flare that looked like the crab nebula's waving sped up a million times.

That was part of the plan. By the Earth calendar it was December tenth and after this rotation it would be the fifteenth, the next rotation would be the twentieth. Pitch rushed through the door to his pod carrying three brown crates in his right arm and towing a hoverboard with a half dozen larger boxes with his left. Though it strained his muscles he gently lowered the antiques to the sofa not knowing how valuable some of the items were (but he knew anything from the starborn decks would cost at least a month worth of joules if he broke it). He smiled as he rearranged the furniture overflowing with the same energy the core crew felt with the news of the docking.

Inga returned from the Drosses earlier than her father expected. He heard the door ding and rushed to shut the library door. When she came in the pod looked like a forest exploded in the family room. She thought it must be a game. Maybe dad hid exotic plants in various and sundry places. She dropped her backpack on the sofa beside the opened boxes and rushed to the Douglas fir sitting in the corner. The pod smelled exotic, sweet with a sharp edge. She breathed in the air and ran her fingers along the threadbare limbs.

"Daad! Is this a game for me?" she bounced around the room running her hand along the garlands strewn over the cabinets and tracing a circle around the wreath hanging over the large rectangular AV-pad.

"Well yes it is. Actually it's for all of us."

"What do we do here? It looks like we should be exploring some-what are we exploring? This looks like those old nature magazines in the library."

She rushed to the library door to find it locked.

"Why did you lock this?"

He thought for a moment stuck in a moral dilemma more than a parenting problem. Finally he chose equivocation and circumlocution over lying. "Ah, that's the rest of the game." He comforted himself; technically it is a game which the parents win until the children are old enough to know the rules.

"Why can't I see what's in the library."

"Because honey you just can't." She shivered with anger for a moment. For the first time in her life she had been told an answer was off limits.

"Come here. All questions will be answered in time. Okay?" He placated her through dinner and her evening story. After Inga had vanished to her room, Pitch hung a single mistletoe over the door to the library. It was almost time. He grabbed his wallet and tablet and rushed to the malt shop.

The shop felt more crowded than he remembered, but the medical staff had taken their break and he planned the timing poorly. That coupled with the docking and the tourists from the Credit made it difficult to find a spot. He imagined sitting in their old booth, but any seat would have to do. Seeing her again, that was the important thing. He waived at every tall brunette in her late thirties that came through the door. He would be right eventually. He sat. The decor had changed. Tesla's Backyard looked more like a memorial to the Desert Wars of the early twenty-first century than to the Cold War museum he remembered from his youth. Time moves quickly in the void, and early twenties became mid-thirties too fast for Pitch.

He waived again, and she appeared like a spirit invoked by seance.

"Petri! I tried to get our old spot!"

Perhaps it was the light, or perhaps it was his memory idealizing the past, but Petri seemed to age differently than he hoped. It took a moment to remember her beauty, and a conscious effort to tell himself they once shared a spark.

"What did you tell her?" Petri said settling into the seat across from Pitch. "Does she know how important my work is?"

"Not much-Not much more than you asked me to. I was leaving it to you to decide how you wanted her to see you. In person. You can't touch a compression, so I-she doesn't know much about you. But I think she will be happy. She has asked the question you know. And I tell her, your mother is a very important person, she'll be with us one day."

"And you wanted to choose that day for me."

"I thought we could make it a celebration, something for us."

"I don't know. Do you think we should taint a family reunion with the promise of a tradition?"

"We'll make it our own."

"It won't be a tradition. A tradition happens at regular intervals, depending on the Credit's course we could be back in a few months or a few years. It's not fair to her to create a fictional expectation I can't live up too," Petri paused for a moment and stirred her malt. "That's why I've been hesitant."

"But I spent the day yesterday planning your homecoming."

"This. This" she held her head in her hand and shook with a touch of anger, "Why do you always to this."

"I won't argue so I won't answer. But you owe it to her. I wasn't planning on trying to make you stay."

"Yes you were. That's exactly the point of starting a tradition. What happens when I ask for a leave from the Credit? You think I'll have preferred projects?"

"You're doing it for selfish reasons."

"If I'm gone now, maybe-maybe we can defy gravity," she said raising her voice with hope for the first time, "I'm doing more for her staying gone than coddling her by putting pictures on the wall and patronizing her. Unless you're telling me you can't raise one child by yourself."

"Are you joking? You are joking. I wanted Inga to have a memory of joy and cheer like I did. Photos may be pretty, but how much can a photo mean?" He threw his napkin on his plate. He could not stand to look at his ex-wife. She had the same knot in her stomach as when they said goodbye eight years ago.

"If that's true," she said with the low brush of anger swelling in her voice, "let us make this visit a single celebration for its own sake."

"She's been overcome with curiosity these last few nights. I told her, 'It's a secret but you'll find out in a few days and it will be magical.' Every year families get together and sing and laugh and love-"

"Oh you've got to be kidding me. I can't figure out what is wrong with you. What are you telling my daughter lies for? - teaching her to be deceptive or making promises you have no way to keep. Except with more manipulation and deception."

Petri was sorry she came to the Flower. She was sorry she responded to Pitch's message.

"I'll come. But you'll deal with the fall out for what you told her. And you have to promise me you won't try to make me turn my entire life around."

"If that's what it takes to give her a memory of her mother so be it."

"Do you remember me?" Petri said standing in the gentle golden glow of the sun rising through the windows of the family room. Ingot wiped the sleep from her eyes, rubbing them red as if to blur the familiar ghost from her morning. Petri stood still, waiting for her daughter to approach. Then she waited for her daughter to speak. Her brown hair had fuzzied during the night. She matted down the cowlick.

Her father stood next to the woman so she must have been safe. He clicked a button on his tablet and the window shade descended to hide the morning in a veil of sunset. The white lights entangled in garland and tree sparkled like distant stars as close as a telescope could make them. There were two boxes wrapped in brown paper, decorated with designs of stars, leaves, and animals. The penguin, that is Petri's favorite animal, or was. The elephant, that's what Inga loved. The girl stood in the kitchen wiping her eyes though she no longer needed too. She was smart enough to understand the meaning of the blonde woman's question.

"How could you remember? You were just a year old. Not even that," Petri said sitting on the sofa, falling back in the bulky down stuffing.

"It's alright," Pitch said walking towards the stove. "I planned this for you. This is your surprise."

"What is the cinnamon smell?" Inga asked looking at her father as he removed a tray from the warming cell.

"Breakfast!" he raised his voice, forcing joy to cut the silence. He toted the pan to the family room and laid the cookie sheet on the table, "It's warm, but it shouldn't burn."

"Could I spend some time with her alone?" Petri's eyes bore through Pitch's heart. He nodded and disappeared into the library. "Don't open the presents before I get back."

"That's an odd thing. Why would anyone bring a tree into a house? And where did he get a live tree up here?" Petri said with a laugh. She patted the sofa and slid to the side. Inga walked as if wandering to the chair on the far side of the room.

"It was an old German custom you know," she answered her own question.

Inga did not speak but took a cookie, gobbled it down, then took another. Petri leaned in and mimicked her daughter.

"So what's your favorite class?"

"Electronics," she finally answered though her mouth was full and her eyes didn't break from the tray.

"Why?"

"I like the silence when we're working on the boards. And I like the smell of class when we're over."

"Oh, copper and solder. That what you smell."

"My teacher said that's a sign I'm going to work in metallurgy down in mech and robotics," Inga said her voice high matching her gaze. Petri smiled seeing her daughter's eyes twinkle in the light of the tree.

"That's silly honey. There are no signs or destinies. You can be whatever you want. Like your mom."

"I know. She was joking when she said that."

"Oh, I didn't know she had a sense of humor."

Inga thought about her answer and finally said, "How could you?"

The knot returned to Petri's gut; she laid the remnants of the cookie back on the tray and dusted her hands of the crumbs.

"I do very important work. Did your father tell you that?"

"You work on a famous ship."

"I, have you had biology?" Petri didn't wait for an answer to give her gift, "I'm working to learn why the starborn only live seventy-five percent as long as terrans. It's got something to do with the effects of gravity on the replication of telomeres. Our bodies fail to quickly then our 'motor' dies out. Then we're gone. I'm trying to stop the degeneration for you. That's why I left." Petri sounded excited. Her stomach had settled and she finished her cookie.

"I'm happy you like your work."

Ingot ate another cookie and looked at the presents. "What do we do with those?"

"You open them."

"I mean, what are they for?"

"For the season. Because it's Christmas," her father said.

Inga and Petri opened their presents together. Old tree books. He gave Inga a picture book of the old world, full of myths and legends of the Fertile Crescent. To Petri, a telecom card. She held it and let out an exhausted sigh as if she knew the meaning without being told. She fixed her attention on the book of the old world. "Why would you give her that?"

"She loves those kinds of things. I wish you knew that."

"It's one thing to love a story, it's something else to love a book that drove us off the surface of the Earth. I hoped you had taught her better than that."

Silence. No songs no joy. They each placed their gifts on the table. "You didn't get dad anything?" Inga said to her mother.

"I didn't know we were exchanging presents."

Silence.

"Maybe we could look at the pictures in her book," Pitch said picking it up and flipping through the rough pages yellowed with age.

Petri said with a playful tone and a smile, "Maybe."

"Would you like to show her how to read it?"

"That would be nice."

Pitch removed himself from the family room and Petri settled in beside her daughter looking at the picture of a man and a woman and the Libyan air stinging the skin of the couple wandering hand in hand, providence their guide and death set to meet them.

Before the rotation could be complete there came the boarding call over The Flower of Kent's intercom. Inga had fallen asleep hours before. Pitch held Petri to his chest in the bed they once shared. "I am haunted by maybe," he said.

"Do you think maybe was too strong?" she had a crack in her voice that confused Pitch.

"If you meant it, no."

"I hope I meant it. But what's it worth if I can't keep that promise? What's it worth to remember your mother as a liar?"

"It's not a lie of you put in the effort but the world stands in your way."

"What if I chose the world?"

"You'll shoulder the weight of that choice, not her."

Petri stood and dressed. "When I come back it will be for her," she said, "I've got someone. It isn't love." She hesitated again, "You should too."

"I would. You're the one I think about every night when I go to bed, and every morning when I wake up. I wonder whether you're asleep or having your dinner, maybe working in your lab. And I wonder if you think of us."

"Which us?"

He shook his head. The second call broke the silent air, "Maybe if you look at the pictures sometimes when you're alone you'll be a little more likely to choose us."

"You don't love me. You love the idea of me. When I return, it'll be for her." Inga was still asleep when the final call came over the intercom.

And there were returns. Every three years as predictable as an atomic decay Petri returned to see her daughter. Each time Inga and Petri talked and laughed: boys, gravityball, boys playing gravityball, university. At eighteen she decided to attend Faraday University just like her mother and studied medical engineering also like her mother.

The return itself was the gift.

The smell of light cinnamon and the milky sweet eggnog Pitch made brought Inga back to those days, as she called them. When a girl cannot talk to her father her mother can make sense of life. Sometimes. Petri never propped up Inga. It is important to let your children fail and fall and learn to rise, like yeast in the heart of mankind.

On one of her visits, Petri taught a now college aged Inga to make bread. She explained an old parable her own grandmother was fond of. "Be as yeast to a misguided world. And what does the yeast do? It goes into the world. It gets pounded into the leaven is shrouded in the dark and put away to die. That's the price of knowledge. That's the way I live my life. I hope it will guide you in your journey through the dark to the light. I will be there for you always."

One warm day at Faraday University located just outside Faraday Station, Mars, news came from the communication relay. There had been an accident aboard The Roaslind's Credit. Many hurt, most dead.

Inga felt a dread not shared by the other viewers. Her mother's words cascaded through her mind like a river terraforming a distant world. And the world stopped around her, the river of thoughts stayed as if by an invisible hand long buried in her mind. There would never be another maybe. Not now. The telomeres were gone, spread among the stars. She thought of the words of the old world, "Oh man! You were taken from the stars and to the stars you shall return."

The next Christmas came with an emptiness. Her father messaged from the core of The Flower of Kent, "The service was lovely. I wish you had the joules to afford a ticket. The Credit is docked for repairs. Perhaps you could visit. Perhaps you could call it a trip." Her father understood for the first time in a long time, he understood the dynamic." And she remembered the smell of the cinnamon, she carried with her the sepia pictures of her father and mother. She would never age, she would never grow old. But the smells and the odd sight of the indoor tree, the silly joyful music her father found in the archives stayed with her until the day Inga must say to her own daughter, "Maybe."
LOMONOSOV'S DRIFT

The Titan sky had a violet crown hovering above the scarlet horizon, and from the surface the Exploration and Research Vessel Lomonosov's Drift appeared suspended in a firmament and geosynchronous orbit. From Gaston Crater she appeared as a graceful and distant star twinkling a blue-blue-red, blue-blue-red code to the ground crew. Her signal, as reliable as sunrise.

Two, or when fortune favored the dig crew, three times per orbital day, orange streaks of light shot from the surface of Saturn's Titan to the station carrying a payload of crystallized methane. On less fortunate days a green streak plunged through the upper atmosphere, landing at Excavation Site Curiosity-Ulduvai, kicking up a cloud of granulated feldspars and schists, finishing with a silent impact, yet shaking the ground above the crew's heads none-the-less.

Black pyroclastic rocks with ferric and cupric striations were strewn across the ground. A hand in light gray gloves sifted through the detritus, finally picking up a strangely proportioned rock. The second hand raised a tinted visor and the man's eyes widened as he rolled the rock between his thumb and fingers, knocking away wan particles. After squinting a bit, and with a little imagination, he realized it resembled a woman with her arms folded over her pregnant belly and a smile on her face. He thought the rock beautiful and hoped Vika would too. Unlike many scientists he often used the word, 'beautiful.' The man placed the rock in his mesh bag and threw it in the storage compartment of the boulder sized, spike wheeled, crane equipped, excavation tractor. On the side was the team insignia, an angry mole with a hard hat, a pick axe and an eye patch.

He pressed a button on his wrist mounted control panel, and there sounded a gentle whistle in his helmet. He could hear a dozen or so voices at once. He cleared his throat and said, "Hello to all y'all. My name is Clutch Spelter and I've been told to expect you. They asked me to do my best to answer whatever questions you might have. So leave any bags you brought with ya in the Tunnel Rat" he said, patting the side of the tractor, "and we'll get low."

They walked down an excavated ramp to a windless cavern lit with oversized LEDs which were anchored to a fence around stalagmite covered ceiling. Spelter searched every visitor before allowing them on the elevator. The trip beneath the surface took nearly an orbital hour, long by stellar standards and frustrating by Titan.

One man threw up his blast-shield and reached for Spelter's hand. "My name is Menelaus Peek. I am the oldest member of our group. We wanted to thank you for allowing us to come see your work site Mr. Spelter." Spelter looked at Peek's hand and shook it with a strong dust-bread grip. His hand was met with a soft arm mimicking strength. Both men were surprised. "We've all been looking forward to this for a while. My wife suggested we get involved with an artifact recovery group after our son passed away. And many of us have been saving for some time, years, a decade, even, to pay for the trip. So thank you."

He thought about the familiar thank you and wondered whether there was a class on the Lomonosov's Drift where these people learned to interrupt your life in the nicest possible way. The rest of the way down, past thuds and grinding echoes and faraway drills the group talked about the machinery they imagined. They described the excavation sites they saw in projection and asked each other, in a voice loud enough for Spelter to hear, what the machines looked like. And what the sites were like. And where did the formations from the pictures come from, if not made by the ERVs Avagadro's Number, Boyle's Flask, or Capellini's Notebook or other names they'd memorized.

When the elevator slowed the group could feel their bodies squeeze like an accordion. Spelter stopped the group as they exited into the excavation shaft. Before they walked through air locks Spelter said, "You don't need to thank me Menelaus, I know how y'all feel. But remember, people do work here, they do live here, and some die here. Even if it looks like it's harmless don't touch it without asking and don't pull anything out of the ground without thinking first understand. I want you to find what you are looking for; I do. But if you love your life, be responsible for it."

They checked their air and their gravity boots, then double checked each other. Spelter opened the final gate and pressed his hand through a crack opening into a violet light. The translucent metal gate opened, revealing to their believing eyes a small corridor with rock painted red and orange with dancing light. The shadows of man and machine crept up the walls and retreated in amorphous flow, like waves on a beach. Before the first foot was planted the visitors felt their suits move as if they were insects caught in the vacuum of a vent system. The slow hum was so loud and disorienting each tourist was forced to kneel, eventually. Menelaus fought the sickness with every force in his nerves and muscles, but without finishing his fifth step the impact of terrestrial sound forced him to genuflect.

Deeper beneath the rock the noise and light faded, or as Menelaus believed their bodies acclimated, after a few moments. And with time each found their surface legs. Spelter guided the the starborn tourists quickly to the Trench and Hammer base camp. Every ten minutes or so he was forced to stop and answer a question. "Where did this formation come from?" "Is there any way this could be natural?" "How do you know these rocks aren't imbued with special, unknown, properties?"

Dealing with the questions fatigued him. The tunnel had grown to more than thirty meters in diameter and become fixed with a steel bottom and automated trams moving to and through various elevator shafts. He hoped the LEDs were not functioning, but they were. He slowed his pace and awaited the inevitable. Menelaus, now acting as book-ready tour guide explaining to the others the mechanics of things none of them had seen before, tapped Spelter on the shoulder and asked about the stone escarpment and bas relief.

"Is that the fresco?" he whispered in Spelter's ear.

"Most of us don't call it that. It's just a memorial." Spelter pointed to the base of the formation. There was a dais with LEDs throwing light on objects too small to see from where the group was standing. Several tourists approached the railing and looked closer, leaning over, hand stretched just short of touching the rock. "Can we go closer?" said Menelaus.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"But we paid a lot of money to tour the site. We thought we could get a better look at anything we wanted."

"You are here for the first time. So I'll be patient with you and answer what I can. Though we don't know who made it, and I can assure you we did not, there are tool marks. But we do not know what kind. And there was a detritus pit with remnants of things we've never identified."

"Bones? Human?" Menelaus' eyes widened.

"Many people died here to keep Lomonosov running. The formation; it's important to the people who work here."

"So there are others. Other craftsmen here before us I mean."

"I think so."

"I thought we were the only crafters. If there are others, why wouldn't they have contacted us by now?" Said Menelaus. Spelter did not reply. He let the tourists look at the formation. That is why they came down. When they were done he brought them to the lower machine driven pit. They met the drillers and well-loggers, roughnecks they called themselves. They saw how solid methane was force separated from the liquid hydrocarbons using thermal precipitation. During the presentation there was little in the way of questions about process, a few obligatory grade school "Is it possible--?"s and "Do you think--?"s. But Spelter's tone had silenced the starborn's questions.

On the way back to the surface, Peek joined Spelter at the front of the group and without the others asked, "What do you think it is?"

"It's beautiful. Isn't that enough?"

On board the Lomonosov Drift's the Akiba Design House was like a subterranean cavern. Echoes and shadows and footsteps and voices filled the darkness. Behind a dim blue light Vika Spelter stood at the holograph panel trying to make her key code work.

"I'm so sorry everyone. Please understand this is a new system and for some reason it's not on my- My card doesn't seem to recognize the designs I created. Maybe I should get tech support here." She kept going until a woman's voice interrupted.

"Slow down hon, just take your time. We don't have anywhere to be right now. It's your turn to impress."

"Thank you-thank you-thank you." she said in a tense but natural voice, "It really is a fun unique design and I bet anything you and your guests will love the look."

She could hear another woman's voice whisper in the dark, "I'm thinking we don't have time to see too many more. The stupid thing either malfunctioned or the girl doesn't know what she's doing. Let's get back to the two we liked and dump the rest of the portfolio meetings."

Vika panicked. "Can I maybe take you back to the HQ Pod and show you what I made on the projection miniature? It won't be walk through and you can't interact with the design but it will show you what we can build for your son's birthday party."

"No. I honestly don't think we would want that. Good day."

"Master Spelter wait here. We need to have a talk." said the familiar voice.

The clients exited the room. Vika raised the lights around the panel. Master Alina Antipova stood, arms crossed, tapping one foot and exhaling a red smoke which smelled of strawberries. "I want to talk to you about your recent client list. Did you bring it with you by chance?"

"I memorized it."

"And that's the problem. It's small enough to memorize. You're an excellent 'designer,'" Antipova put the word in air quotes, "but I have to take issue with your use of ergonomics. You see our clients not only expect the best possible beauty, but they expect functionality. Maybe more so than beautiful. Functionality is, one could argue, and I will since I'm your boss, the sine quo non of aesthetics."

A bead of sweat rolled down Vika's cheek. "I can do this you know I can. You hired me. Do you remember my designs for the Satriani-Vai Conservatory and Performance Hall on Bohr's Last Laugh? Or what about Asimov's Pen or the Gardiner Hubble Museum. The Planetary Exploration Society was more than pleased. Dr. Xuan promised you the next project, didn't he? Didn't he? Just one more chance. This domestic stuff, it's not me. But it can be I know it."

"You're just not making me any money Vika. Why not let Clutch make the dough, you bake the bread?"

"Please; I can't. I sat at home for three years while he was on Titan. And do you know how horrible it feels, being useless. When my friends asked me what I was doing do you know what I did? I lied.

"And each lie built on itself until I was terrified of being in the same room with people I had lied to. What if my past came up? 'Oh she's been working on the new core design,' followed by, 'oh she told me the project was the renovation of the Judicial Library.' I was afraid to leave my apartment. What if. That was my life for three years; what if. I need this. I can do this. I know the beautiful. I know its awe and emptiness and fear. Maybe even reverence, if that's not saying too much."

"But you can't keep a client," said Alina with more strawberry smoke.

"I want my friends back."

"Alright. You'll host an open house at your apartment. I expect it to be clean, efficient, practical and modern. I want at least one client. One client for your job, understand?"

"Thank you."

The Drift, like all domestic-outfitted space stations, was circular, a tube around a central vertically oriented power core. The exterior was covered with independently fixed pods giving the station a white sheen with dark gray bands on the dorsal and planar sides. One of the pods belonged to the Spelter family. They named her The Hero of Our Time; the name was Vika's idea. It was larger than its neighbors, and fixed on a lower deck, a new home adjacent to used pods. Each pod came with all the amenities including a small power source used for docking and emergency escapes (but the starborn are superstitious and never spoke of the need).

On this particular day (the idea of 'days' and 'nights' were antiquated, but the terms are still useful for describing the human biorhythm; day being the domain of Norephedrin, the night belonging to the neuvo-dios Melatonin and for some, Quetiapine). Vika had arranged the pod like one would arrange a gallery opening. Bright white walls matched the tone of established and trusted clothiers. Starborn ladies were raised accustomed to the muted orange lights breaking the dim shadows illuminating art for the sake of conversation.

Dooris, the intelli-door, slid open and in her artificial voice welcomed Clutch home. He tromped through the kitchen and hurled his dust covered boots down the hall and into the bedroom then wiped his hands on a towel laying across the dining room table.

"You're not disturbing my presentation are you?" Vika said from around the partitioning wall.

He thought for a moment and chose not to 'paint himself in a pink corner.' Educated women could put aside their training and go back to guts when it came to their homes. "I didn't know you were planning anything. And since when do you decorate at home? This is expensive. Do I look like I'm made of titanium?"

"Abs of Titan-tempered hydrocarbons maybe."

"That ain't what they'd call poetic."

She tried to wipe the dust from the corners of his mouth, and settled for gave him a peck on the cheek, smiled and said, "Another day in the separator?"

"We had tourists. I had to show them how we extract the methane."

"Sounds like we both had bad days. 'The Frog with the Velvet Whip' is coming over with half the membership list of Anton's and she demands a new client or she'll sack me. So it's important that we make a good show tonight."

"Well then, Oh! I was going to give you this for Gagarin Day but tonight will do just fine," he rushed to his pack and took out the foil wrapped rock. "Isn't it odd?"

"Look at those, they look like eyes. It's like a fat woman staring me down."

"Maybe it would go well with our antique collection."

"Hmm how about I leave the dusty science to you and you leave the elegant engineering to me." She took the artifact to an old wooden box with a crystal panel that glinted under the orange track lights. She opened the case and shoved aside a violet half-geode and a rose quartz. "There. It looks at home between them."

"The geode next to it makes the woman look like a king playing with his throne."

"Oh please tell me that's not some roughneck euphemism for 'the deed.'"

"Think me that base do you?" he said in a starborn accent.

"No. Thank you my sweet nectar," she licked her thumb and wiped away some brown, "but go shower before the guests arrive."

A ding-dong-ding rang through the pod interrupting the soft notes of a classical guitar performing Asturias. Vika, preparing her face, looked up and said, "Dooris who is it?"

From overhead came the artificial voice. "Three men in evening wear and two ladies carrying small gift boxes. Should I let them in?"

"Yes. And open for anyone appropriately dressed through the evening. Anyone but Burtie Dunnage. That man is a toilet that won't flush, he's the ass that shits in my volcano cake."

"Your husband's mouth is rubbing off on you."

Clutch was fumbling with his tie, "My mouth rubs off on her every night."

The door released her pneumatic valve, which sounded much like a sigh, "Neither hammer nor piston will pass without your permission. The Dooris guarantee."

Emma, the service-bot, hovered from party goer to party goer holding a tray with one hand and asking in a synthetic, but comforting, starborn accent whether the patrons would like a glass of champaign or wine. From time to time she interrupted her deliveries to comment on the lovely, warm and historical design. "Is this not one of the finest examples of early twenty-third century Venusian decoration you've seen on our ship? As authentic as the originals, and I saw the originals." So subtle with her wording. Clutch was glad Vika rented her for the night. She could implant within guests' minds a desire to purchase, via quoting fashionable holographiers, or talking obscure designer biographies. A well placed compliment could elicit an "Oh yes yes, isn't she wonderful," or an "I've always wanted one of his originals," from the panicked starborn.

Master Doana Ruess, MFA, an ergonomic artist to all the finest people, a woman of sixty plus years and not shy about showing her age or mental acumen, made a quiet effort to track down Vika. "Is it not a little, shall we say politely, 'tasteless' to use a robot to entertain your guests?"

"It's common on most rec vessels, and is quite fashionable on habitat stations as well."

"Well, this is a mining operation full of mud faced, rough neck, doodlebug science mongers isn't it."

"That's a little chimpish. If it weren't for those doodlebugs we would be freezing, suffocating, or bored to death, wouldn't we?"

"Chimpish? Oh please don't misinterpret my words dear, you throw a darling celebration, but," she looked around, centered her eyes on the glass case, "it appears someone has defiled your designs. Some rockhound put a door-jammer under your display case. I bet it was Master Dunnage. He was speaking aloud of his displeasure for such a bold choice. You know Dunnage of Dunnage and Daughters Design? Came to fish from your stream. I bet he snuck in by dressing in last year's fashions so your door wouldn't recognize him. I don't see his two heifers."

"That rock was a gift from my husband. He found it on the surface. He's a mining geologist."

"I didn't mean to offend. Forgive my ignorance. Your home is so beautiful I assumed you were educated in a finer school." She caught her words, "which is to say, most engineers would know better than to be so bold. And I mean that as a compliment."

"My father was an actor and my mother an artist. We have hardly a scientist or engineer in our family, save Clutch and myself."

Several rough-faced scientists stood in a corner drinking chocolate stout homebrew from personalized steins and laughing too loud. Clutch said, "Lemmie ask ya: if an astronaut dropped trou in space and farted, would he keep going to infinity?"

"Uh, momentum says yes," said a blonde woman with age around her eyes.

"Can you imagine-" Patrons watched the rockhounds break out laughing at unacceptable gestures involving the 'netherspace.'

"Clutch is his name? Um," Ruess pointed to the case and reverted to her default setting, "Do you know what Missus Dross said to Missus Flux and Missus Dunnage? It's so juicy I almost kept it to myself." She lowered her voice to a whisper, "She said there was a beautiful glow from the eyes and she felt a warmth radiate from the hands. Can you believe those superstitious lollybobs? Their brains are no higher than swamp chimps!"

And so went the night for Vika and Clutch. One glass at a time their guests attempted to out-snark each another. And eventually every guest was caught in the radiance of what they were calling 'the artifact.' In hushed tones a man approached the Spelters and asked, "On which part of the surface did you find something so special?"

"In the shaft outside one of those elevated platforms," said Clutch.

"It's called a dais," said the man.

"Yea it was near one of the ones we set up for some guys who gave all a few months back."

"I knew it!" and the man rushed off to join the others in hushed tones. Names were exchanged on the way out the door, but no clients came of that evening. Just before bed Vika instructed Dooris to adjust to the default style and restore their bed to a more comfortable setting. Clutch fell asleep when he hit the sheets. Vika lay awake, in defiance of her quatiapine, wondering whether to show her face tomorrow.

Dooris buzzed several times before Vika answered. She was still in her pajamas and sat in the family room watching the production of hamlet 'in the round' as recorded by the Scurvy Dogs Comedy Troupe from Faraday University. "Is it Master Antipova?"

"No. I don't recognize them. But they are wearing real silk and I detect hard currency. You know what that means."

"Word spread. Turn the house around. Go back to night's design."

"There isn't time. They're talking about going away."

"Fine."

There was a bottle of unopened champaign on the kitchen counter. Vika snatched three flutes and filled them without a care for the head. She dashed down the hall, throwing her PJs on the unmade bed and flinging dress after dress on the chair. "Let them in, give them a drink, and help me pick out something lovely!"

"My name is Menelaus Peek and these are my assistants. My time is valuable. I've got three galleries to see today so I'll be curt."

"What can I help you with?"

"We're not interested in your design skills. Sorry to disappoint. I want to buy your artifact. Twenty-four hundred chitin. I offer that for an unvalidated piece of art. Let the risk be mine."

"I can't that's something my husband gave me. He gives me something from every moon, asteroid and comet we visit. It's worth more than money. To me."

"It's worth nothing if it's just a rock," said the anemic male assistant on his right.

"Do it in the name of science," said the svelte woman to his left.

"I'm an industrial engineer."

"Then do it in the name of beauty," said Menelaus "It's worth too much to sit on a glass shelf. If it is worth anything."

"What do you want with it?"

"Run a few tests. See if it possesses what has been called a vivification property."

"Who called it that?"

"Your guests. One of them suffered pain in her back. After spending a few moments in front of The Artifact she was healed. I want to see if it was true."

"What kind of moon dust have you been sniffing?" said Vika.

"I'm not on anything. And my offer is serious. I don't care whether you think we're loonies. I know what your people think of us and the truth, deep as space itself, is this: we don't care. None of us do. Just take your money and go splurge on grease for you and your dirt-born boot monkey," said Menelaus.

"It's been a while since I held my nose walking through the upper decks, stank rises don't ya know, but back then insults weren't a viable currency."

"This is more than you'll make in five rotations. Just take it, give us the artifact, and we'll be on our way."

"It was a gift from my husband and it's not for sale. Good day. Sir."

"You love helping people I can tell. If you give us the artifact we can test it for you and determine whether it has some vivification power."

"It doesn't. It's a rock."

"Rocks have properties just like all matter. Why is it so hard for you people to believe that perhaps there are properties to the universe we've not yet unearthed? What makes you think it's natural? None of us know what's beyond the Kuiper belt."

"I'm tired of arguing. Please leave my home."

"You're keeping what belongs to all of us. You have no right," said the svelte assistant. She stepped toward Vika shaking her finger, "My father is dying. My brother lives in pain."

"It belongs to all of us," said the anemic.

"Why are you being so stubborn? Don't you see what this could do? Or do you not care about the rest of us?"

The woman paced the floor circling the glass case. "That's it isn't it?" She pointed to the little figure. "It looks the way I thought it would when I heard about it."

"There are three of us and one of her," said the man.

"Don't be so vulgar," Menelaus said opening his case.

"If I sell this to you it invalidates who I am and what I believe. And therefore a contradiction to my life, and my love for my husband. Please leave my home."

The woman stepped to Vika's face again, "Others need that artifact. It was here before us and it belongs to all of us. What right do you have to keep it for yourself?"

Vika stood her ground. The woman gritted her teeth, squinted her eyes; her hands shook and her face flushed red. She raised her hand. Vika braced her body for a strike that never came.

"I wouldn't. You'd call the rangers."

Vika inhaled deep and said under her breath, "If you don't leave my home you won't be the one taken away by rangers."

Menelaus pulled his people back, whispered in their ears, and said upon reaching the door. "A very good day to you - Missus - Spelter."

The next day, with Clutch still away, there was a knock, and Dooris said, "There is a man and woman, well dressed, with a boy waiting for you. Should I let them in?"

"What do they want?"

"To speak with you in private."

"Let 'em in."

She stood to greet the family. They pressed their son forward, though he stumbled and his neck had trouble supporting his body. He held, in his tiny hands, a gray and brown marsupial called a petmonk. "We're Nebula and Dromida Salt, and this is Kelt. Thank you for seeing us, we know you must be busy, what with all the whirl and rush around your new treasure."

"Not so much, nothing I can't handle."

"We saw on The Investigative Mind, you know that e-periodical? We heard you have been working hard to help the genetically unfortunate."

"I'm sorry what do you mean?"

"We'd like to use your artifact. It's for our son. We've only got a few more weeks with him, and well, even if it can give him a few more years, even months, we'd be forever in your debt."

"My-" she hesitated, "What do you think that rock can do for you?"

Dromida leaned forward as if to share a secret, and said, "It has healing powers. Everyone says so. All the best people have assured us they've been treated. We can't pay, our lifestyle doesn't afford such things, we have to keep up appearances, you know for the sake of business."

"You don't go to the doctor so you can dress well? Yet you want me to treat your son with, and let me assure you this is true, a rock."

Her husband stepped forward, "It's not a rock. We know what you have. Everyone does. It was in The Mind. And besides, all our friends told us how you helped them. So maybe for us? I run the most fashionable of stores and you can take your pick of fine gowns. Nothing for next season, obviously-"

"Shut up you greedy chimp! Give her next season's fashions. Who cares which deck she lives on." Dromida shook her head, running her hands through her curly blonde hair with fury. "It's my son's life!"

A smile grew from Vika's face. "Come with me then. And promise you won't tell anyone."

"Thank you," Dromida clutched her breast as the tension in her shoulders faded.

They stood before the glass cabinet. Vika removed the rock and rested it upon a white columnar end table. She dimmed the lights, save the one above overhead. "Stand in front of it."

They pushed the boy forward.

"Not him. You."

"Us?"

"Yes it works through you."

"I don't understand," said Nebula.

"Neither do I. It's one of what your people call The Great Mysteries. Now repeat after me. Ogga-lala-booga-lama-boo-ka-homie-boom."

The parents looked at one another with hope for the first time in years. Together they said with a slow, joyful melody, "Ogga-lala-booga-lama-boo-ka-homie-boom."

For a silent moment the parents looked at their son. "Do you feel anything?" Kelt shook his head and clutched his petmonk. The little brown furball looked around licking his paws staring up at the boy.

Vika said, "Maybe we need to try harder. Here like this. Ogga-lala-booga-lama-boo-ka-boom." Though the words were the same, she folded her arms behind her head, thrust her hips back and forth, spun around, and shook her butt like a bee.

"Ogga-lala-booga-lama-boo-ka-boom." The rump shaking continued. Then they waited some more. And after a moment, the door slid open and Clutch yelled, "You'll never believe what we found today! Where are you?"

"In the family room. We've got company."

"What are you doing?" said Clutch.

"Using the healing power of the artifact."

"It's a rock, just like this one." He pulled a calico colored tetrahedron from his backpack and laid it on the table.

"What healing powers does this one have I wonder," Dromida said picking it up, with hope in her eyes.

"I'm going to say no more than that one."

Clutch knelt to the boy and looked him in the eye, "Son do you feel any better?" Kelt shook his head again.

"It's not working. You made a fool of me for nothing," said Nebula.

"You made a fool of yourself when you rang our buzzer."

"You're keeping its power for yourselves. We'll see about this. Give us the artifact. We'll investigate it for ourselves. We have friends in high places."

"It was a gift from my husband. No."

Nebula stepped to Vika's face. Once more she refused to be moved. The only sound came from the air purifier's low hum. Clutch stepped between Nebula and his wife. Vika brushed him aside, "I've done everything I can to help. Please leave."

The Salts shoved their son forward, "For peace's sake; we don't want to call the authorities."

"Call the rangers then. I can no more stop you from stealing my gift than you can force a rock to heal your son."

One night, not so many weeks away, Vika heard clang thud clang thud crack, and the screech of metals driven by an engine. She stood up, rushed around the bed and threw a robe over her teeshirt. Clutch unlocked the cabinet and removed a rifle, set the scope, installed the energy pack, turned the trigger to 'pulse' and threw it to Vika. He took a second for himself and did the same. In a whisper she said, "Dooris; front camera."

The wall mounted projection screen showed the faces of five rangers hammering away with a pulse ram, battering at their door. Behind them was another ranger, blast shield down, igniting an arc-torch. Circling them on all sides were starborn civilians. At the front of the mob stood Menelaus Peek. Many in the crowd held luminescent glow sticks illuminating images of loved ones. They chanted in a slow pulse that matched the hammering. "Justice for Kelt, salvation for all."

A gloved arm waived the rangers off. The torchist approached.

Blue and green sparks flew from the nozzle as he focused the beam to the shape of a knife. Its color shifted from blue to white. The glow illuminated the Dooris. Clutch watched as the image faded like a window covered by a snowdrift.

"Just give it to them," Vika said.

Clutch cracked the glass case and snatched the rock from the shelf knocking the geodes, minerals, flowers and love letters to the ground. He rushed through the family room, through the kitchen, to the door. The clanging had ceased and a slow burn flowed through the doors and a white glow appeared at the top of the crease. "Dooris open the drop box." A six by six panel slid open. Clutch looked through to the outside hall. Menelaus grinned at his guide and pointed to the slit. He dropped the rock on the ground and yelled through the slit, "Take it and leave us alone!"

"You can't just take what belongs to everyone!" shouted Nebula. Dromida stepped forward and said in a low gravelly voice, "She has to learn to respect the will of the people. She has to learn justice." Behind her the crowd fought over the rock. Clutch slid the drop box shut. The torch continued down the steel crease.

"They don't want just the rock," he said.

"What do they want?"

"They're saying 'justice.' But they mean 'revenge.'"

"Dooris, shut the blast door. Seal it," Vika said. She dropped her gun and threw open a panel in the center of the family room.

"You realize shutting the blast door will isolate your pod from any assistance I can provide, including legal council and diplomatic-"

"Just do it!" They blast doors stayed open. Vika worked through the controls. In front of her the wall opened. Behind it was a wide viewport. And through the viewport lay a silver and gold river of stars spread out like a path home.

"Can we make it?" she said to her husband.

"Aim for Titan. If we hit it we have a chance."

"Dooris the blast doors. Now."

"I want you to know you were the best family I've ever served. I will miss you terribly. Goodspeed Spelter family."

"Thank you for everything. You were a friend when we needed one," Vika said.

The blast door clanged shut.

The rumble came slowly at first. The pod shook and the furniture rattled, finally falling to the floor. They strapped themselves into captain's chairs and slid to the steering controls. The screen fell from the wall, the holo-table slid forward. And a red glow appeared on the blast door.

"Separating in three, two..."

"Do it."

"...one." Vika pressed the yellow and blue button and rockets fired for a second. The pod shook one last time. A few seconds later the detritus of their destroyed home gently lifted from the ground. Clutch swung his chair and slid toward the adjacent wall. He unbuckled, floated up and lifted the cracked screen. He manually opened the controls and brought up the sol system.

"The Hero of Our Time is sovereign once more."

"Are they following us?" she said.

"I don't see any Ranger vehicles on the array," he said and drew a route from the Lomonosov's Drift to the excavation site Curiosity-Ulduvai.

"They won't come after us," she said.

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do. That wasn't the point. It never was. We lived; they won."

A tiny burst of blue and white from the rockets eased the boat down angle. The wan and orange of Saturn's rings stretched before them. Lose debris clanged on the hull of the ship like rain on a titanium roof. Vika reclined in her chair. Clutch laid his arm around her shoulder and watched the rings disappear with their turn. A golden halo rushed across the window. The light raked across the ceiling, walls and finally to Spelter faces before disappearing leaving the pod dark. Beneath them the pockmarked surface of Titan soon rose in the distance. "It will be a few hours." She rested her head on his shoulder and held his hand, and together drifted toward a beautiful home.

THE STORM FISHERS

Outside Faraday Station perlait farms rolled through craters and valleys. Wizened tree trunks set root in the topsoil of winding escarpments, and the perlait's violet fruit swayed in the gentle spring wind. The perlait produced ruddy leaves not quite matching the Martian loam. When seen from the towers sprinkled through the station the rustling leaves resembled a wildfire. The trees produced syrup that dripped on the heads of the shufflers and the hulls of the harvesters. Quark Quill stood on his dorm room's balcony and looked through his telescope toward the farms. It was match day, pi day, and a haboob rose from the west. He struggled to see his childhood home through the fine red silt.

But being a farmer's son, the obscurity eased Quark's mind. His eyes couldn't focus on either the fermentation silo or the main house and therefore couldn't tell whether his parents would make the match ceremony. He couldn't see the harvesters creeping over the hills, but he could remember their growl. Neither could he hear the songs, nor smell the sweat of labor under the freezing sun, and that was all for the better. Even without the immediate world igniting his memory, his body chilled over the rustic future from which Faraday University had helped him escape.

Every intern-year student at Faraday felt an electricity as they anticipated their first professional assignments before graduation. Thirteen years of study, by rod or by chalk, as it was often said, led to match day. Over ninety percent of students were assigned to first choice stations. But as humans are a case by case species, the match process disabused some of the notion of fairness. Even so, before sunset most students would board cruisers and frigates for distant moons; they would exchange old friends for new faces and trade home for the first footsteps of the rest of their lives.

When Quark entered the university his probationary adviser asked, "And what do you intend to study?" Quark remembered how he sat in the chair and without a moment's hesitation announced, "I'm going to be a physicist. Put that down please."

"Physics requires permission of a researcher. You'll need to find a sponsor to declare that major."

"What about chemistry? I could settle for chemical physics."

"All the hard sciences require a research sponsor. If you were admitted without a sponsor you can declare math, if that's to your liking. Then - well have you heard of Doctor Spelter from physics? - he was admitted on probation as well. This is a bit of a local legend. He began in math and went door to door until someone sponsored him. He had to work in five different labs that year. Then when he had consigned himself to business administration, he was taken in by the lab of Doctor Pinhammer. And the rest, well, that's what they study over in history." The adviser giggled at his prowess in reciting the story to every disappointed probie that had been in Quark's seat.

"Will I end up in business or something?"

"Not usually."

"But there is a chance?"

"There is a chance you could get hit by a falling meteor. But you still walk down the street, yes?"

Quark signed the declaration to the Department of Math and Statistics and enrolled in remedial algebra. Though the major had been declared he could not place into calculus. He retook the placement test every afternoon of his first semester. The day he placed, he rushed to the Faraday Student Center and bought a piece of perlait cake with autumn icing. Each bite reminded him of home. Three weeks until the harvest break. There was no time to waste in finding his sponsor.

And yet, by harvest he did not have a sponsor. Nor did he have a sponsor by square root day, nor by pi approximation day. He consigned himself to a math diploma.

"It provides a lot of options come intern time." Quark stood in the doorway to Brine Slurry's room.

The dooms at Faraday provided a private room attached to a communal area. Brine had been sponsored by Pinhammer before admission and spent half of his days in the M-testing lab. Brine put down the soldiering iron and stood to stretch his hopper-like legs. Brine was taller than Quark by fifth of a meter, and wiry in build. He had been raised by a farm family from Io and never paid much mind to Martian fashion. And he wore dark rimmed glasses as his parents could not afford the surgery to correct his astigmatism. In a school where politicians and investors bought seats for their children the two young men found themselves looking in the same direction, from the same outcrop. A good friend is more valuable than a metric ton of Molybdenum.

"I thought you said you'd settle for math when the Kuiper Belt eclipses the Sun. Why did you give up?" Brine stretched his arms and popped his fingers one by one.

That kind of question was considered impolite at Faraday. But after moving in they become fast friends. Each understood the meaning of physical labor and neither minded trading dust on the boot for an education.

Brine had been trying to get Quark a seat in the physics department and had yet not exhausted each option. So he felt justified in saying, "I can't believe how easily you're giving up. It's a little-well put yourself in my lab coat, I go up for you and now you're giving up?"

"Well, the way I figure it, getting a good set of recommendations from math will put me in engineering one day and engineering may not be the core, but it's pretty good none the less."

Three years later Quark was sitting beside Brine on bleachers setup adjacent to the tarmac outside the university space port. Hundreds of young people, the top minds of the year, waited silently next to their chatty parents. Quark turned one last time to see the red sandstone towers and gray limestone roofs of Faraday University.

A gust of wind came first, quickly it felt like a dust storm. Then a hum and the swirling clouds parted as the Interplanetary Research Vessel The Poet of the Black Birds, called 'The Black Bird' by those in the know, came to hover just above the tarmac. Crimson and Violet landing lights, set against the pitch colored underbelly, twinkled like the Milky Way. The chain of thunder faded to a hum as she docked just one hundred meters from the bleachers.

Captain Dross, a stout man with a gray beard and gray eyes, stepped to the microphone and in a deep gravelly voice hardened by decades at the helm, gave what he thought was an inspirational speech. The students though were too anxious to hear how their lives were beginning and how much learning lay ahead. As the assignments were read most students shouted triumphantly, hugged mom and dad, some with appreciation for all they'd done, others for appearance, and rushed to the teleporter.

Slurry comes before Quill in the alphabet. Brine cheered at "Physical Engineering, 'Reactor Core Team'." He hugged his mom and hid a quick tear. He shook his father's hand then turned to Quark. "I'll be putting my things away. I'll save you a spot in my room if you want."

"Do you have to ask if I want?"

"I'm gonna get the fermenter set up." And Brine threw his rucksack over his shoulder and hustled to the teleporter pad.

Quill was the fourth to the last name read that day. The Slurrys sat with him and spoke as they had at Founder's Day cookouts. They chatted about school and the perlait trees and about girls; they'd always been kind to Quark. The sun was setting and the wind getting cool when Dross turned to Quark, "Come on up son. You'll be in the accounting sciences."

The guide sign at the fork in the hallway smiled at passersby, waiting for an opportunity to help. The sign introduced itself to students as they walked past ignoring it, as if they instinctively knew where to go.

"Would you like some help?"

Quark walked to the AI sign, "Which way to the core?"

"Oh congratulations! Just take the elevator on your left and get out on negative seventeen, then take a left a right and another right. You'll see the rest of the students in their apartments. I believe they're celebrating. Hurry before the bubbly is gone."

"And which way is accounting?"

"Robotic inventory is what we call it here. Same tube, up to thirty-seven and you'll see it directly in front of you."

The accounting suites were quiet and azure like an irrigation well. The halls were painted with a formal tan stripe, the doors gray, though some students had personalized them the welcome signs. Quark wandered down the empty corridor until he came to suite 382. He started to knock, then saw the thumbpad with a nearly human face smiling up into space, blinking. He signed and laid his right thumb on the light blue scanner.

"Welcome Master Quill."

Laughter and two voices greeted him before he passed the foyer. A man and a woman were talking as if they were old friends. He stood and watched for a moment, shy as he'd been on the first class at Faraday. They looked at him for a moment. The woman sipped champaign (Venusian, '25), the man glanced over and mimicked her motion, and finished his drink.

Quark juggled his bags trying to set his computer case on the ground, but ended up dropping it on his foot.

"Hello." He used the most sophisticated tone he knew. Both his new roommates looked him over and the woman sipped quickly finishing her glass. She took a third flute and poured the three drinks until the bubbles overflowed each rim to the counter.

"I'm Quark." He stuck out his hand and remembered to smile, as the books on stellar etiquette suggested.

"My name is Volt Rebore, this is Maria Karst."

"Maria, you're-"

"Terran. But I've lived on Phobos for the past decade," she handed Quark a glass and raised a toast.

"My parents are Terran. They named me William and called me Billy until first grade. They stopped when I came home crying. My dad called me Quark since before I was born, so we settled on that at my next school."

"I wouldn't change it no matter how much I stuck out," she said. "But I understand."

Quark didn't drink his champaign immediately. He wandered from the bar to the social room and ran his hand on the crimson couch, sank in and smiled almost laughing. To his right was the entertainment console, to his left hall leading to bedrooms, at his back was the kitchen. No wall separated the two spaces, unlike home. And in front of the couch was a window eight by five meters wide giving the most angelic view of space he had seen. He turned back to his roommates, who were now lost in conversation and another glass, "When I was young I used to go out into the back vineyards and find a space between the trees that gave me a view of the sky. My brother and I used to take our flashlights and shin them at the stars wondering if anyone could see them, or maybe shine back. Sometimes we saw a satellite or a ship and thought maybe they could see us and take us away." He turned back, rose and walked to the window. He reached out tracing new constellations between the nebulae and planets. Mars vanished below; Quark looked down, unable to see the farm, and wondered if his brother looked up that night. "Nothing at home compares to this."

"Robots."

The two laughed, ignoring him.

"I got assigned to the robot inventory department. How about you two?"

"Hmm?" She broke away from Volt's story. "Oh I'm in business law. I want to go into politics eventually."

"And what about you?"

"Oh, ah, finances. I'm in finance." And they shut Quark out once again.

His suitcase suddenly seemed heavier than it did. His roommates had claimed the two front bedrooms. And while all business student quarters were in theory the same, Quark's room at the back and adjacent to the washroom felt small. Perhaps it was the large bed or the antique wooden dresser. Though the claustrophobia became obvious after unpacking; his room had no view of the stars.

Science and engineering dorm walls were a light blue and gray, but the color mattered less than the makeshift decorations the students constructed in an effort to personalize their homes.

Above was a mobile constructed of orange and blue pipes spinning and whistling to announce visitors. The deck had been tagged with three dimensional holographic graffiti giving the impression of walking across I-beams on the hull of a frigate. Behind the hull illusions of stars twinkling in regular blips, unlike in the administrative quarters, made Quark laugh and reach down smudging the glass. Almost every dorm room door stood open. The Senior Intern read an old tree-book copy of Comacus' Astrochemistry for Astrobiologists, but even she left open her door for the sake of the wonderful smell of burning conifer cones.

And there were voices all chattering and laughing the way people laughed after the afternoon talks in the seminar rooms at Faraday. Unlike the meet and greet with visiting lecturers Quark didn't smell coffee and cakes. He did hear the Ziggy-Zaggy made famous after Faraday defeated Roger Bacon in the first game of gravityball. His people must be nearby. Brine's voice carried, but he couldn't see his friend. In fact, he couldn't see anyone.

From nowhere a heavy hairy arm landed on Quark's neck startling him, then comforting him with a mug of perlait homebrew. "Here ye go new friend. Don't worry it's all comp'd by that tall feller down the hall."

"I don't see him, where is he?"

The big fella clinked glasses spilling a little on each other and laughing. "My name is Nugget and I'm from The Musk Institute. Energy research is my game. Let me introduce the other newbies."

"I'd just like to find my friend if you don't mind. He was supposed to save the brew for us."

"Oh your friend. Well what use is brew if-not" Nugget stammered and, arm still around Quark's neck, lumbered around the corner, into the lounge and pointed at Brine, "shared among new friends and old? But I understand. First time from home, heh. BRIIIIINE whatever-your-last-name-is! Your friend just arrived!"

"Brilliant. Did the AI play a trick on you?" Brine toasted and waived Quark over. "Here is Nugget, and there is another Nugget, and that girl over there is also named Nugget. We should get 'em to bunk and we'll call them the Boulders for short. I'm sorry. I tried to save you a room but there weren't any left."

"Oh I'm on a different floor actually."

"Where did they stick you?"

"I got stuck with administration."

"Oh." Brine set his mug on the adjacent table and punched Quark in the shoulder.

"I thought math would be get me into physics, maybe even the core."

"I'm sorry brother. But maybe you can transfer in when one of the second years leaves in a few months."

Quark shook his head and swigged his beer taking the last drop and belching like a geologist at field camp. Those in the immediate area turned and raised a cup to Quark. "Fill 'er up and show me around."

They wandered the halls, dodging boys and girls listening to sCasts downloaded from the shortband. "Lately it's been a great way to discover new bands. It's hard to get new music in the deep. That's what they say anyway."

Azure and crimson shot across the ceiling drawing the colors of Terran dawn. "Have you ever seen anything like that?" Brine said.

"I've heard about it."

"That's my design," said a woman behind them. As Quark turned around she swigged her drink to hide her eyes. Her smile shone past the glass, giving away her pride and maybe something more thought Quark.

"This is Quark, I'm Brine, and we're from Faraday. What's your name?"

"I'm Andromeda. I went to Roger Bacon. Math and physical engineering. I don't have an assignment yet, just a department." Andromeda had dark hair slightly past her shoulders and eyes to match. Her smile was a little bit crooked, which gave her a girlish appearance, and hiding her mind. She squinted a little and slipped on a trendy pair of blue glasses showing off her alma mater. Quark seemed confused for a moment and realized she must have attended on a research grant, just like other rural students.

"Oh so you had no idea what you wanted to do." Brine laughed, looked at the sunrise and before she could retort, "You're a little bit inspired me thinks. So what's your opinion of the brew? Because I made that."

"I like it," she swayed her shoulders and flipped her hair the way women did in the movies.

"We both made it actually. Well he brewed this batch, but we came up with the recipe together. We've got a whole menu full actually."

"That's true. Wait, where is it? Hue and cry I didn't bring it with me."

"It's up in my room!" said Quark before he realized the implications of his words.

Brine winked in a kind of collegiate Morse Code. It was a familiar ritual dating back to science lecture mixers. Quark sighed and said, "Maybe we can hang out after work tomorrow."

"Aww where are you going?"

"Who is this?" The three turned around. An older man stood rocking back and forth, hands in pockets. He wore a banana colored shirt and olive slacks. Gray brushed his temples and speckled his beard like a dilat fruit without needles. He reached out to each in turn and introduces himself, "I'm your resident adviser for core team Faraday-Bacon. Ali Ibrahimzade. And to answer your next question. Yes, I'm Terran. But don't let that fool you. My brain works just fine." After learning his identity the three uttered an obligatory laugh, even if they didn't believe a man that young ran the ship's core. "So where were we, and can I have a drink?"

"Oh, this is Quark. He's from up in um-"

"Robotic accounting."

"Really?" Brine said with a little extra pity this time.

The others made their introductions, including several eavesdroppers. "Quark was about to go upstairs and get ready for the first day."

"Well, actually, I'm trying to figure out what it is that a guy's gotta do to get assigned to the core team sir."

"Oh I'm not so sure a mixer is the best place to talk business. Maybe another time." By the time Quark turned around Brine was scooting through the crowd, his arm around Andromeda. He turned back to Ibrahimzade who had also vanished. He spun around and saw not a familiar, or even friendly, face.

As Quark walked toward the elevator, he looked up and shouted to nowhere, "Brine. Let's experiment with raisonberry brew this week. Bet it would go over great!" A short moment passed; the bell chimed and the doors opened and before they closed he saw a hand shoot up and heard Brine's voice shout back, "You bring the berries and I'll bring the love!"

When Quark returned to his room there was a message waiting for him. He clicked on his inbox's accept button and saw his mother and father wave and smile.

"Hey son, we've gotta say sorry about missing ye send off, but you know how the machines can get 'round harvest time. And plantin' time." His mother interjected, "We hope you'll stay safe and send us a line when you're in range of a transmitter." His father came back, "They don't need transmitters on that station. The whole thing is a transmitter." She shook her head, "We wanted to tell you to keep an eye on the post. We sent you something and I hope you'll enjoy it. All our love and all our pride."

The message faded and Quark rolled into bed without shutting down his tablet.

Quark dug through his unpacked bags, unintentionally unpacking them into every corner of his bedroom, on and under his bed, behind his desk and over his antique bookshelf until he found a quantum drive. He plugged in his quanta reader connected his holokeyboard and mouse as the drive was being read. On the screen a little blinking pair of eyes and a smile. Quark smiled back and said, "Hello Poly."

"Hello! Where have you been?"

POLYMATH had been his information year project at Faraday. He called her a she, though she was properly an it. When a man sits at home every night eventually the longing for companionship overtakes the brain and he names his algorithm. The name came from his collection of antique silvergraphs of the gentlemen scientists from the nineteenth century. The family had a storage house for seeds and machinery which Quark thought, at least since he could draw constellations in the night sky, the upper floor would make a fine home for his father's telescope. The lower floor could be used for storage, if he still needed self-funding by the time he was old enough.

Poly sighed and said, "You look depressed. Were you not assigned to the core?"

"Are you disappointed?" he said. She gave him a heart-to-code talk, the way she had so often done.

"To be perfectly honest, my programming was less adapted to the core than to general accounting. And robotics should be fascinating."

"How so?"

"A girl gets lonely when she has to talk to her maker, her maker's friends and that half-logical housing program. Not that you're not a wonderful maker, but can you not appreciate this opportunity? If not for you, then what about me? What about your mom and dad?"

"I'll be alright tomorrow. That much I know."

He turned off his light, cleared his bed and pulled the covers over his head. "Good night, Q." she said.

If the stars could look through the black and witness a frigate moving at what is, from its frame of reference a remarkably high speed, they would see 'The Black Bird' hull at the mid deck arched in the shape of a horseshoe nearly bisecting the frigate. And upon closer inspection the stars would watch as smaller transport vessels docked like a dart flying through the black, hitting a bullseye ten thousand miles away. On the landing deck giant DOCS, docking and collection systems, shook the deck as they thundered toward the edge of the ship. Quark stood on the mezzanine gripping the handrail to retain balance as the DOCS passed beneath.

The dock held the transports in rows and columns allowing the ASR23s, accounting and sorting robots, twenty-third generation, to hover silently on magnetic rails buried beneath the deck. The ASRs were sterile white with color coded bases, which Quark quickly realized were blue for loading, red for unloading. The far corners of the deck held crates with unfamiliar markings stacked like pillars supporting the hanger.

Men and women moved between the bots avoiding the half-aware of their surroundings machines. Following the arch around the mezzanine and rising three stories above it was a tinted acrylic window. Quark saw human shadows moving like perlait moths in summer, pollinating the buds for harvest.

"Quill? Quark Quill?" said a gentle voice echoing, from where he could not see.

"Above you."

A man in his late thirties wearing a fitted cotton midnight blue suit with ash colored pinstripes and similarly colored shoes descended on a hovering platform. The hovercraft slowed blowing Quark's hair back and when coming to a rest leaving his hair looking like he'd been caught in a Martian spring windstorm. The man reached out to shake Quark's hand. He had unweathered pale hands, the kind scientists and engineers never had.

"I'm so glad you were assigned to us. You were my top choice from all Faraday. Did they tell you that?"

"You're the dock manager," Quark said finishing the handshake.

"I am indeed. Step on and I'll take you to control."

"I'm so excited I almost forgot my own name! Argon Redbrast. They call me Argie. We're all on good terms here. Did I mention how much I've been waiting to meet you? Haa Ha - yes!"

Quark felt embarrassed by the attention. Redbrast's hands induced for a moment a longing for the core; a wondering what Brine and the Nuggets and Andromeda were doing at that moment. Probably conducting novel experiments under the inspiring guidance of Doctor Ibrahimzade. The praise wiped away the litost and Quark looked where Redbrast pointed. Below, the ASRs collected the golden crates with black lettering and loaded them on each ship carefully.

"Do you know what they're doing Q?"

He shook his head.

"Those crates are airtight, insulated energy modules. They power everything from the power plants fueling Faraday Station, and your parents' farm, to medical ships, to the exploration vessels shooting past the Kuiper belt. How marvelous the sight. And it's our job to account for every joule of energy passing through this ship. We're like a relay between the rock planets and the gas giants."

The platform descended to just above the ASRs 'heads' giving Quark a closer view of the opening to space. He couldn't catch his breath to produce a full though. Instead a whisper like air escaping a hose said, "How-Ah-"

"It's marvelous isn't it?" The platform whisked them to the edge of the hanger. "You can touch it but do not penetrate the field."

Quark drew a smiley face with his finger and laughed as it washed away with crimson and violet waves like the sea covering a heart in the sand.

"How-ah, I've-what?"

"It draws on the background radiation to repel the void. I don't understand the rest."

"Of course," he replied, his tone confusing Argie. Did Quark show his appreciation for the wonder of science, or surprise the accountant did not understand the science. Argie cleared his throat and said, "I also know you applied to the core. We were not even a choice on your intern form."

A pause with no response.

"But let me show you something I think you'll love."

Buried among the massive crates of energy were small personal baggage, and sitting atop a pyramid of baggage was a narrow silver case marked "Quill, Quark; 'The Black Bird' via Faraday U; care of Quill Family Orchard, 2885 Armstrong Road, Faraday Station, Mars."

"It arrived three days ago. There was an old fashioned letter accompanying. I tucked it in my jacket to keep it safe. I didn't read it."

-Quark,

Son, we're real sorry we didn't see ya off. But we're also real proud you made it that far. I know you'll make core. Give all our best to Brine and all your new friends. We'll be waiting for you when you return. Not to be too sentimental, but we've been cheerin' ya on since you was a boy, even if you didn't know it. There are no words for how much we believe in you.

All our love for you and your dreams,

-Mom and Dad

The letter went into Quark's coat pocket as soon as he finished reading it. He rubbed his hands along the box and waited until his throat cleared to ask for a crowbar.

"You can open it with the key here. Put your thumbprint on the pad and it'll open. Of course it would thought Quark. He sighed, thumbed the pad and no sooner than he removed his thumb the red lights turned yellow then green. The air pressure hissed as it escaped. A golden flash of light shot through the case's door. He waited, thinking of the letter in his pocket and deciding where in his room he could store it.

Encased in black bracing foam was a bronze telescope made in the style of the sixteenth century astronomers. The ground glass lens projected a rainbow of color on the case door. Quark chewed his fingernail. His brow furrowed. He held back a tear for the second time in the last minute. He reached out but did not touch the bronze. He could not think of touching the edges, marking the perfectly polished tubing with oily fingerprints. Their gift shone like their pride. They must have saved since before he left home to afford this gift. Perhaps it was intended as a graduation present, yet became an apology. What it was intended for no longer mattered. His heart pounded stronger and louder than it had on his first day of school, when he stuck his head into a crowded classroom and asked whether he had found remedial chemistry.

By placing his hand on the telescope, by dirtying their gift, he was claiming a place in the core. Redbrast moved next to his apprentice, hands locked behind his back, smiling and rocking back and forth on his heels. He hesitated again, closed his eyes and felt by accepting this gift he was telling a lie. He imagined the disappointment on his mother's face when he returned the next year. He could see the silent shame from his father's sigh as the man learned of his son's failure.

Quark looked at his mentor then at the gift and chose to reach out, his will resisting his desire one last time, and brush the bronze as if he was stroking his beloved.

The next instant he recoiled like a child touching a stove for the first time. His steadied his legs and breathed, meditating to relieve the moment. He stood the telescope's tripod on the deck, positioned the scope towards Saturn's rings and took his first look. He felt like Galileo, no Copernicus. Copernicus had been his favorite astronomer since he could look to the stars.

Tears swelled and he could not contain himself again. He knelt on one knee steading himself with his hands, like the telescope. He had consented to a lie. It was the most cowardly moment in his life. In an act of defiance he stood surveyed the hangar, the ASR's hummed past oblivious to the moment, and thought of the core.

Perhaps his lie could become truth.

Any amateur astronomer knows the view is always better in the dark. Over lunch Quark had set up the telescope in his living room so he could watch Io disappear as 'The Black Bird' changed headings, setting course for the gas giants. Few students made it past the asteroid belt during their intern year. Any scientist worth his programming skills would jump with laughter around the lab upon hearing the ship was to intercept the storm fishers.

But Quark went to Poly and asked, "What are the storm fishers?"

She blinked, paused a moment and brought up the display, shrinking her face into the corner. "Storm fishers is the slang term for solar wind based energy harvesters; they're not fishermen at all."

"Oh I thought maybe it had to do with Neptune."

Poly laughed, "No not at all. The cargo you've been tracking are crates set up by storm fishers to collect the electro static charges from 'fishing' the storms on Jupiter and Saturn. Watch," the display, a static photograph of Jupiter taken from Io came to life.

"I can't see what you're talking about," though he was squinting. He even put on his glasses and pressed the \+ key three times and drew a rectangle around the storm.

"Let me do it," and a compact-dimension projection emerged just above the keyboard. Poly zoomed in a hundred thousand times until a silver sail emerged from behind Io. Quark grabbed the image and spun the projection around until three more sails appeared trailing the first.

"Is this what you mean?"

"Yes, look closely. They're just below geosynchronous orbit. That means their velocity is slightly faster than the planet's rotation. They are not actually moving on a curve either. Look at this," Poly turned the projection herself giving Quark a closer view of the surface of the storm, "do you see those cables connecting the sails?"

"Yes. Why are they hanging from the ship with the sails?"

"That ship isn't a ship at all. It's more like a skiff or a barge capable of storing billions of volts of emf harvested from the storm."

"Faraday's law," Quark said with an awestruck whisper.

"That's right. Hidden beneath the surface is a magnetic coil strung with the cables connecting to energy cells on the skiff."

The projection would go no further. Poly flattened the rendering into two dimensions and illuminated the ceiling with a view closer to the giant planet than he ever dreamed he would see. And in a few short half-lifes he would pass the surface himself.

"See here is the parent ship for those skiffs." Poly shifted view from the planet to the shadows behind Io. A corsair, thin and sleek like he had seen in the hangar, captured the solar sail and reeled in the fishing boat, first sail, then the containers, the cables and finally the massive induction coil, nearly too narrow to see and almost the length of the corsair itself.

"That's where the energy cells that power the core come from. Clean, efficient and as far as anyone can tell, infinite."

"Poly, do you enjoy our work in the hangar?"

"I love getting to know all the interesting AI's that come in from the ships. It's wonderful."

"What would you say to an experiment."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Maxwell-Faraday equation. Induction. Not of storms but of gravity."

Three Martian weeks had passed.

Quark spent his free time working with Poly on an application of induction to gravity. She was skeptical which frustrated him each night before bed. He did not think Volt or Maria would understand; whether he kept to himself or whether they ostracized him was hard to tell. He thought each night, looking out his telescope at the asteroids passing by or being smashed by the ship's deflection field. It won't matter who doesn't like you around here. You'll be having a homebrew, (perlait or raisonberry, both made him smile) and a laugh with Brine, Nugget and Andromeda. Wouldn't it be fun, getting chewed out with friends.

There came a knock on his door and Maria's voice saying, "We left some dinner in the fridge if you're hungry. You know, you're welcome to eat with us. We don't bite."

"Thanks. I'm a little busy with Poly."

"You'll have to tell me about her sometime. Argie brags and brags about you two."

Quark climbed into bed without another word and stared into space. For a moment he wondered what he would say if he opened the door. Nothing. He wouldn't be around long enough to befriend the business students anyway.

Walkways rolled around the edge of the circular core room. In the center lay the reactor core. A golden glow pulsed from behind titanium shields in three second increments. Between each pulse, steam and heat rose from the center stacks and vaporized before reaching the walkways. Interns wearing gray heat insulated work suits, looking similar to the padded and braced in place under armor used in gravityball; stared at their tablets, paced the walkway, carried tools aimlessly or some combination of all of the above (sometimes at the same time).

Footsteps clank and clang echoing through the corridors and growing as Quark rushed down the stairs towards the control room. "Is Brine here?"

"Hey! What's new in the room with the view?" Brine smiled and waved over his friend.

"Let me ask you for a favor."

"What's the what? Got a new idea for a shindig?"

"Not exactly. Well it'll be cause for celebration enough I figure. Listen. I came up with an idea that'll get me into the core."

"Assignments have been handed out. They don't let people move you know. The balance is picked so we have enough of everything and no one gets left out once they reach the real world."

"I know but listen, they can just replace me on the next round of assignments with an extra business-type, accounting-whatever," he was frustrated his excitement had not been returned. "But listen okay. I have an idea for how we can obtain energy via the CMB. I know they harness it for the shield on the delivery deck. I think we can 'harvest' it like they 'fish' for storm energy."

Andromeda walked up behind Quark and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned hoping to see Dr. Ibrahimzade. "Oh. Heya. Were you listening?" he smiled at her but could not help scanning the background like a radio telescope searching for a sign of hope.

"I'll listen, what's your plan?" she said moving next to Brine. Quark looked in Brine's smiling eyes as she handed the physics intern his lunch and sat in his chair opening her brown bag and retrieving a sandwich.

"She brought you lunch?"

"I made it for him this morning, for the past three actually," she said.

"Oh." Quark looked for a chair himself. His mind caught unaware, his thoughts could not reach back to his weeks working with Poly at every free moment. He forgot about the CMB, the Cold Spot physics he had crammed into his brain and hastily analyzed with hope to change his life's trajectory.

"Oh," he said again trying to summon his thoughts.

"Take your time. It can't be easy," said Brine. As they ate more and more of the core team entered the control room. Quark watched as the interns laughed and told stories of their labs "...what's the story in Fermiville?..." "...how was that possible without dismissing the very low entropy detected..." each snip he caught brought a tear closer to falling. He felt the hope he had clung to fade a little more with each laugh and bite. He thought about the dinner Volt and Maria left him each night.

"Uh okay here it is," one by one the crowd stopped chatting and listened like he had imagined students in labs listened to lectures on sunny afternoons at Faraday, while he labored in the tedious computer lab. Quark first explained how engineers were harnessing background radiation bombarding the ship to power the ship's docking shell. This the core students knew. He fumbled over a few words and like a novice polemicist inadvertently creating a non-sequiter, jumped to his idea.

"What if, I mean, I think we could create a kind of matrix on the exterior of alternating magnets that would generate an electromagnetic pulse as the ship passed through the background radiation, which as you know contains a small charged particles. We could harness the pulse and send it directly to the core obviating the need for external energy cells."

The young scientists were silent, save Nugget's crunching on a wafer. Andromeda sighed and looked left and right seeing the blank faces and hollow eyes of her contemporaries. Brine nodded slowly and said, "You've put a lot of thought into your theory. Are you sure you were ready to present it?"

"What do you mean? It's sound. Poly and I both agreed."

A young man with a long neck and messy rat brown hair spoke up, in a cracking deep voice said, "Friend you've invented something marvelous."

"Really?" he smiled looking past Brine and Andromeda.

"Yea you've invented a whole new category of stupid. No a phylum, a kingdom of idiocy." With each insult the interns laughed and one by one broke into groups ignoring Quark and by extension Brine and Andromeda.

Brine turned to Nugget, "You want to help out? Help us out I mean."

"I like my reputation just the way it is. No thanks."

The room felt warm under Quark's collar. His heart thudded in an unpredictable rhythm like an olephont pacing the artificial earth floor at the Faraday Station Animal Park.

"Maybe you could help me a little-" Quark said looking through his friends, past the interns, out the window at the core, "-maybe we could work on this-um-you want to-raisonberry home-maybe."

"You should go."

The room spun a little and Quark sat down. Andromeda put her arm around him, "You'll be missed at your station. But you can stay here for a little while," she scanned the room, a few coworkers rolled their eyes at her kindness, most ignored her like a ghost, "I wouldn't want to. But that's just me."

A quiet background sound filled the bedroom like a lullaby. Poly smiled at her maker singing gently along with the tune. Quark sat on the ground beside his bed. He hadn't cleaned his room in weeks and his distraction both showed and smelled. There was a new message blinking in the corner of Poly's screen. It read, "Get in touch, all our love." He thought perhaps they would go away. Perhaps they would think his work was so important that he was as distracted as Hugh Everett driving his car. Important men had better things to do than answer their mom's email. Brine probably skipped out. Maybe even Andromeda. Maybe Nugget. And did anyone else break from their work for fear of falling behind by even an hour? Of course not. Those legal scholars outside, laughing and playing with the cat (what was its name? Who cares?)

When 'The Black Bird' rolled past a comet the light broke through his window causing a flare the color of wheat to reflect off his telescope and bisect the room. The line looked to him like the boundary imposed upon him by the men and machines of Faraday. The councilor said math could take him anywhere.

And a knock on his antique wooden door woke him from the haze of self-pity.

"You in there?" said Brine. "I know you are. Your roomies told me you are. Come on out. They're about to feed that cat. It looks like a rabbit with the nose twitching!"

Quark took his time answering. "Poly turn it down please. And open the door. It's Brine."

Brine bounced in the room looking around smiling, "Yea this is what I thought it would look like."

"Clear something off and have a seat. If you want."

"So what's up? You okay?" Brine wiped the food-stained pile of t-shirts from the star blue microfiber seat in the corner. "No one said anything after you left. Andromeda even said she kind of liked your initiative even if you don't have the background for the hard sciences. Nugget said he dug the balls you have. I said, 'Yea they're as enlarged as your old man's prostate.' He said, 'how do you know that?' It was a good day."

"I'm glad you're enjoying it. I had hoped you would."

"Listen. You know I'll fight for your right to test your hypothesis. Sure as Hell is a malfunctioning multiverse with no entropy, I think everyone deserves a shot at their dreams. So whaddaya say we ask Ali what he thinks?"

"What do we say? I've got this half-ass'd hypothesis and I want to waste some of your resources testing it?"

"Nope. We say, 'Wouldn't the world be a better place if there was some wise old prince to tell da Vinci to pick a topic and stick to it?' Quark is an accountant. Who's to say he can't be more than what the algorithm made him?"

"It is a good idea. Though maybe it could use some work."

"Maybe. How many years did you spend working out Poly's odd ticks? Remember when she would cuss out anyone who came in the old room like a guard dog barking?"

They shared a laugh. "Do you think Ali is in his office? I'm too excited to eat, sleep or play with the cat."

"You'll never know if you don't try."

Brine waited until Quark got his shoes on. They dashed through the kitchen on the way to the door. "You guys going out? If you want to hang we'll be around this evening doing a marathon of 'The World beyond the World.'" Maria shouted. Volt joined in, "Nice meeting you Brine!"

The core team had wound down the day's research operations, they had cleared the cooling system and flushed the energy cells with water to prevent overheating and thus a melt-through. The observation deck held two shadowy figures reclining as if falling asleep. Brine led Quark through the corridor banged on the wall of the observation deck and shouted, "Wake up or screw up," and turned to his friend, "hey! Come to help us out?" he said to Andromeda passing through a crossing hallway.

She looked up from her papers and waved, "What are you two misfits up too at this hour?"

"Going to get permission for an experiment."

"Oh you going to get an assistant?" She bit her lower lip and lightly punched Quark in the shoulder.

"No I'm going to ask Ali if he will give Quark a shot."

"Really?"

"Do you want to help?" Quark interjected with optimism in his voice.

"Are you going to be in charge?" she said looking at Brine.

"I was going to leave it up to Q. It was his idea. I don't wanna hork the credit, or geep the blame," he concluded under his breath. "I'm kidding...they wouldn't let me off anyway. 'Specially not if you burned a hole in the hull."

"I'm tired, probably not," she said.

"We won't be doing it tonight. We don't even have permission yet. C'mon come with us. You know you the best science is always a little crazy."

Quark burst in with, "You know Tesla had this idea whereby the whole of Earth would have had free power. He was going to build a tower outside the first New York and have it shoot balls of electricity to any house that needed it. That's how crazy you have to be to change the world."

"Tesla was in love with a pigeon that he thought shot lasers out of her eyes. Have you been conversing with some pet I should know about?"

"C'mon," Brine pinched her shoulder and finally she relented.

Brine smacked the observation deck door one last time for good measure. "It's a good thing Ali can't see you from his office, huh."

And indeed Doctor Ibrahimzade's office sat nestled away from the whirl and hum of the pulsing central core room. Brine stuck his head through the half open door and knocked, "Sir can I steal a moment of your time?"

"Yes yes of course Mister Slurry. What can I help you with?"

The old door creaked as Brine swung it open. Andromeda followed then Quark slowly entering like a little brother tagging along. "Well what are so many of you doing?"

The office seemed like a closet and there were only two free chairs. Quark stood in the corner holding his tablet looking at Ibrahimzade with pursed lips and rocking from foot to foot. Brine began, "This is my friend Quark. You met him when the internship began. You thought he was a member of the core team, remember?"

"I don't want to be rude, but I also do not want to lie. But there are so many faces coming and going; I'm sorry we have to be introduced a second time Quark. You may call me Ali," he smiled, stood and extended a gentle hand, "I try to be on friendly terms with those outside the core team."

"Thank you. I respect your work very much and I've read up on your metallurgical background and research into transforming solids into plasmas."

"You understood it?"

Quark thought a moment: having understood the text would impress Ibrahimzade to be sure, though he could be caught in a lie and thus sabotage his chance at a life in science. A scientist must above all be honest. If one cannot trust the gatekeepers of fact with truth the world will descend into solipsism. "Honestly...I am trying, but it takes so long to get through the texts and I have so very little mental energy after working, and that is diverted into my own science."

Andromeda bit her fingernails waiting for Brine to speak, "Sir that's exactly what I came to ask you about. You see, Quark wanted to be a part of the core team; or any science team-"

Quark interrupted leaning closer, "Physics of any kind, chemistry or maybe geosciences or energy of some sort."

"Maybe you could help him?"

"Now it is I who owe you an apology Quark. The core team is filled and unless someone fails the internship, which I don't think anyone will, the core team will graduate and return to their respective universities." Andromeda reached out and took Brine's hand squeezing with the thought of the inevitable arrival of that day.

"Well, I think he had something else in mind sir," said Andromeda. "Quark came up with an interesting idea. It could be impressive enough to earn him a second internship, maybe delay his return to university by a year. That's happened I know it. Nugget is actually on his second internship up from chemical physics."

"How do you propose to proceed? Which is to say, what do you ask of me?"

There was a plasma board hanging from the far wall, Quark approached picked up the laser pen and after getting permission to begin a new file, explained his hypothesis. There was some resistance on the part of Ibrahimzade. Quark went too far as to introduce Polymath letting her explain the physics behind the equations. And still the gentle doctor shook his head giving Quark a puzzled look of disbelief. He knew that look. It was the look of a man who two decades before could have stood in the intern lounge and rolled his eyes at a novel idea.

Before the doctor could wave them away Andromeda interrupted, "It's important to him. And if you need any proof that he has a good and strong mind consider Polymath. If you've not heard of her, well, go to a water fountain and listen to the gossip. The ship's AI has the biggest mouth you've ever heard. And frankly, I think it is in love!" If Poly could blush she would have; Quark could and he did.

"You have good friends. And you are a brave young man, perhaps even a bright young man."

"So you'll give him a chance. So you understand?" said Brine.

"No."

For the first time since entering, through the hour and more explaining the hypothesis in detail as precise as a physicist tracking an electron, Quark felt the chill of the air conditioning. Streamers tethered to the vent above blew down and cooled the rose color in his cheeks. Quark fell a few inches towards the wall with exhaustion. He wanted only his bed.

"But I will give you a chance," the room came alive. Andromeda and Brine smiled for Quark, Ibrahimzade smiled as well. "I'm not giving you the chance because I understand. I'm giving you the chance because I don't understand."

A silence filled the room, but joy was evident. Ali continued, "I'll set up the experiment when you are ready. Be brave; this is the key to science. Be brave and perhaps one day we'll see you in the history books."

"There must be something to it if..."

"Why would he..."

"...maybe we shouldn't have laughed..."

Heat regulation occurred thirteen decks above the terminus of the central core shaft. Looking down from the dais in the center of the room red pipes marked with an arrow leading away from the cylindrical core, blue pipes were marked with an arrow leading towards the same. A loud rush pulsed in increments of ten seconds growing louder thundering and fading, a muffled Doppler effect. On the dais sat an experimental table covered with a bituminous-black heat sink. Three tubes the diameter of a cup extended vertically from the center of the table. One tube was marked with the green electrohazard symbol, the other two with pink magnetichazard symbols.

Doctor Ibrahimzade paced the dais, hands behind his back humming and looking at his finely cut shoes. Brine stood next to Andromeda and Nugget leaned beside her. A dozen interns leaned against the railing, leaving enough walking space for Quark.

He was five minutes late, but he had shown up. "I'm sorry closing out the inventory took longer than I thought. Thank you again. And thank you all for coming."

No one spoke. Brine bit his lip, Andromeda mimicked him. Quark cleared his voice and briefly explained the experiment. Though he had rehearsed the presentation for a week he still stuttered and tripped over terminology. His tablet stood open on the table Poly looked out at the students smiling.

As he prepared for his experiment the whispers began again.

"...is that her?"

"...do you think he made it..."

"...not on his own..."

Captain Dross appeared from the shadows of the poorly lit hallway like a phantom particle interrupting an experiment. He said nothing but nodded to Ali who nodded back.

Quark affixed a half-meter by half-meter beige storage box to the anode and diode. "When we move we should capture a predictable quantity of energy in this miniature storage unit-uh-and well-what we can do then, is we can use a little energy for the initial burst of the thrusters-ah-and then we should be able to keep going-it's because of background, BCM, CMB, CBM I mean."

Twenty seven minutes had passed and the voltmeter had jumped three times but never detected a continuous feed of current. "Do you think we should wait a few more minutes?" Quark said looking at Ali.

"No," said Ali.

"Well, is the ship moving at the correct speed?" Quark asked. Captain Dross nodded once without a word. The move felt stern like a vice squeezing wood until it breaks. But the pressure subsided as Dross removed himself from the dais.

"This has confirmed what I thought when you showed me the math. The experiment has failed," Ali announced to the audience.

Snickers erupted behind Quark. Brine and Andromeda looked at one another with eyes watching the day's hope escape. This was it. He may never return to the core. Maybe not even to say hello to friends old or new.

"Who are you laughing at? He failed. There isn't a punchline in that," said Ibrahimzade with authority. He clasped his hands behind his back and paced in front of his students like a villainous schoolmaster.

"I am ashamed to call you my students. You perform your assigned tasks, this much is true. But not one of you has approached me with an experiment half as daring. Perhaps I have failed to show you leadership."

No one laughed.

"You knew my math was wrong," Quark raised his head and turned to Ali.

"I suspected as much."

"Then why did you let me perform the experiment?"

"Science is the process of being wrong until you are right. And even being declared right does not insulate you from criticism. The strength of science does not lie in its inherent truth, but in the ability to question its truth without being destroyed for your ideas."

For the first time since leaving Faraday Quark wiped a tear from his eyes. The interns did not mock him. Ali wrapped his lithe arm around Quark's shoulder. "Don't comfort me. I know my place."

"No you don't. That is your wellspring of strength."

Flickering light streamed from under the door of room 382. When Quark walked in Maria and Volt were sitting on the sofa watching a comedy, his head on her bare knee. She threw a blue quilt over her lap and Volt's head which he threw off as he sat up laughing. They looked at Quark and turned to back to the screen expecting him to pass without a word. When he sat on the recliner beside the couch the pair straightened up like lovers being judged by the girl's father.

"So what was work like?" Maria said handing Quark a bowl of cubed fruit.

"Yea are you liking robotic accounting?" Volt followed her question before Quark could answer.

"Did you see the telescope my parents sent me? They think I'm working in the core. That's what I told them. I'm not a bad man. You know. But, but-all I ever wanted-I should- do you think I should-no I am going to, to tell them, the truth. I know they'll just say 'keep it, we're proud of you anyway' but I-ah"

"Ahhh you're shy. I gotcha," said Maria. After a long pause Quark balked at standing and walking away. They had turned to the television, and returned to life without the third.

"Do you think it's possible to love without hope?" Quark looked at the couple clutching his tablet and therefore Poly. "I love science, but it doesn't love me back," a forced laugh came from behind his cracking voice. "Accounting-bots love me, well as best a bot can love a guy, but who can love them?"

"Clearly you've not heard of the Voigt-Kampff test," said Maria.

Maria shuffled places with Volt leaning closer to Quark, "I don't love the bots. But the trade deck is fascinating. I meet all kinds of interesting people coming and going. Not long ago we had a group of what I suspect were pirates, would you say they were pirates?" she said looking at Volt.

"Maybe. The smelled like pirates," Volt shrugged and added hastily, "I imagine."

"You're going to tell me about Phobos one day mister," she turned back to Quark and continued, "And then the pirates showed us about smuggling and using AI to hijack radar. Then Captain Dross came down, as angry as you could imagine, and told them, 'Who do you think you are, musicians? Stop corrupting the young!'"

"They were a ribald bunch, and the deck became quite the fiasco!"

She continued, "And we've met ambassadors from the Terran Union. I spoke with three former senators who knew my mom and dad when they were young and Oh my! They had some stories to tell. I'll never be able to watch my mom bend over again. I'm not kidding."

Quark didn't speak, but he did return the first honest smile Maria he had shown Maria since arriving.

"Did you know we met a group of miners from Io? Methane miners. They were renegades I think. They brought up solidified methane to trade for energy blocks. But they did it off the record so the Foundry wouldn't see any missing income on the end of the cycle business report."

"I've read about the Foundry," Quark added with a burst of enthusiasm, "renegade scientists?"

She understood where the conversation was going, and in the same moment understood Quark's isolation. "You didn't even give the deck a shot. Everyone who tries to speak to you, you ignore them and bury your head in some formula or talk to your AI. So-I've got an idea. Come with me and give us a chance," Maria said taking both men's hands.

"Aaaah, not now. I'm watching the show," Volt protested.

"I want to get a little sleep," said Quark rising from his chair this time sans hesitation.

"Nope nope nope, not falling for it. Both of you. Ahora."

Violet and ochre light from the crab nebula streamed through the clear acrylic canopy stretching over the Hooke Astrolabe Service Bar. The bar hovered and spun slowly over the observation deck, which in turn overlooked the familiar loading deck. From the teak bar Maria pointed to the beautiful chaos with what was once called 'some strangeness in the proportion' below. The SRVs moved like geese evading a predator gliding between freight boxes. "It's a little bit beautiful isn't it?" She said in a delicate, awestruck voice.

The rays streaming down caught Quark's attention. He looked to the stars, then to the deck. He felt a calm, like a boy accepting the razor-like precision upon which the universe was balanced. Below him was his future, on every side were his colleagues. Beside him were friends. When a man becomes a boy it is time to put away childish things. Perhaps, he thought, those childish things sometimes included old friends.

"Can I introduce you to some of the people you work with?" said Volt raising a drink to a man across the bar.

When he returned to the room, Quark decided, it would be appropriate-no mandatory to uphold his values-to write home and explain his true position. But for now a new world awaits. "I would like that."

The SRVs, general service bots, had come to a halt and lined up along the wall adjacent to the hangar's energy bubble. The far deck had been cleared and the cargo lined up as if for inspection. And behind the cargo 'The Black Bird's' officer corps had assembled like a roman cohort. They placed their weapons on the ground before their feet.

"Are they surrendering to the cargo?" Quark said sipping his drink and laughing.

"Orbital burden," said Volt. "Every time we cross a moon or planet's orbit we have to pay a protection fee to the Solar Rangers to maintain their station. It's to keep us safe from pirates. We must be nearing Jupiter."

"I don't know if we have enough to pay for more than one crossing," Maria added.

The bar had massed along the side rail looking down in silence. It was nothing new to the accountants and financiers but every stop was in its own way unique and dangerous. Quiet filled the hangar like a dead distress beacon passing a lifeless moon. Finally Captain Dross approached the officers like an officer arranging an already perfect skirmish line.

"The captain has to approve doesn't he?"

"No. He has to genuflect," Maria responded after a tense breath.

The Ranger's Horntail class patrol ship was narrow with mat black finish and yellow stripes outlining edges like a pyramidal chrysalis. The coloring, Quark remembered, was like the wood ants in the perlait trees. Red on top so they can't be seen while resting, and gray on bottom to hide while flying. The Rangers docked as silently as they had pierced the veil protecting 'The Black Bird' from the void.

"They call it worker control," said Brine pushing his way towards Quark.

A din from antiquated instruments: wrenches, bolt cutters, cat's claws, ice picks, anything available in the core team's abandoned lockers, were being loaded into backpacks and strapped beneath the scarlet and gold Terran Union space suits. The core team dressed as diggers. Each scientist stitched a patch that read Ulduvai-Curiosity Excavation site, Titan onto the uniform's breast pocket.

"There are channels. We can appeal this! Are you all mental?" Maria pleaded with the core teams, Brine, Nugget and Andromeda among them.

"It's just what I believe," said Dr. Ibrahimzade. "We've lost resources to this 'burden' since before I came on board. And now, for the third orbit this voyage, we've lost research materials. We've lost energy."

"It is just energy," said Volt.

"There is no such thing as 'just energy.' Energy represents someone's life do you know that? Every calorie every joule that you use came to you by the sweat of another's brow. Steal from a man and you steal his life. The captain is a coward. I will not live under threat of force."

"But there are channels. My mother is a member of the Terran Union Congress."

Brine approached, "Do you know that the collective noun for apes is a congress? Do you need to know why?"

"That's a rhetorical appeal. It's not logical and you're marching off on a mission-Quark this is your friend."

"Quark we need your help," the director said putting his hand on the young man's shoulder. Those were the words he dreamed of since before he could program in HAYEK-2.2, and now they had come.

"What do you need sir?" he addressed Doctor Ibrahimzade as a member of the core team would.

"I want to know if Polymath can make an entire ship disappear. Not indefinitely. Just for a little while."

"I've never used her to manipulate matter before. I dunno if she could do it. She was meant to get me through topology and real analysis back home. But maybe. If she's hooked into an electronic system she can remake the building's architecture." He pointed at Brine and began, "Back at Faraday we used to-"

"Another day brother."

"I don't mean physically." Ibrahimzade continued, "I mean make a ship vanish from 'The Black Bird's inventory. We have maybe a few days to retrieve our resources before they are sold off or given to some pirate."

"Why did you come to me?" he turned to Brine.

"This is real help," Andromeda said strapping a knife inside her boot and securing it with electrician's tape. "You have to do your part. We all do. Each one."

"Does the captain know you're going?" Volt shoved his way through the core team's huddle.

"Clearly," Nugget said in a sarcastic tone, "Which is why we need Q's program to jack a ship of our own."

"The inventory system resets every twelve Terran hours. You probably won't have time to take one and return it before the ship's AI knows it is missing," said Quark.

"In other words, give up now and hope it will work out in the future?" Brine used a tone meant to remind Quark of his probationary adviser.

The air felt still and the moment felt as if the hour had been captured by a black hole. There are moments that make a man who he will be for the rest of his life. Each of us must choose. And when we choose we create a copy of ourselves that follows the path not chosen. But in this reality standing before his future, Quark looked to the constellations peering through the port window bathing the equipment room in shadows and light.

"I will help you. But I will help on my terms. Using force? That's not bravery it's frustrated ignorance. Your minds were created for great things. You are scientists. You are heroes of the imagination."

"Ubi sunt...respice post te, ubi sunt...respice post te, memento mori...respice post te," Maria whispered to herself, eyes closed, rubbing a small silver medallion that once belonged to her mother. She sat patiently upon a small cargo crate. SRVs floated by carrying energy, minerals, the products of another's time in this world.

The three scientists waited until no SRVs were within detection distance. Quark installed Poly on the hangar's mainframe. She was active in under thirty seconds. "I've got control," she said. The SRVs veered to the side wall and powered down. Moments later the lock on a cargo crate popped open. The three scientists quickly pulled a flat 5m x 9m metallic sheet from the top level and loaded it on a manual pushcart. Within minutes they had positioned a lathe over the sheet. Poly activated the machine.

In the control room above accounting interns behind the tinted glass watched readouts pulse in seven second increments. The screens indicated the SRVs were preparing the next cohort of energy cells for the arrival of the next ship. No one thought of anything more than the next caffeine break.

When the lathe finished its work Quark and Brine rested it on the crate beside Maria. "Are we ready?" she said in a somber tone.

"Almost. Quark, Poly I suppose, needs to adjust the accounting ledger so the scandium plate doesn't show up on the inventory until the next reboot," said Ibrahimzade. He turned to Quark, "Is the transport invisible yet?"

Quark reconnected his tablet and Poly disappeared from the mainframe, "It is."

"Let us find out," Ibrahimzade slid an ID card across an authorization pad and thumbed when instructed. Slowly two doors parted before them. "No attention siren. We're good," said Andromeda looking back at the control room.

Argie, stood upon his hoverpad overlooking the ordeal from the upper deck. He began to descend. The SRVs sprang back to life. He continued to the control room and hesitated, "Good speed and good ways."

A Ghost Pepper class transport, often favored by pirates for speed and a low radar profile, ascended from the ship's auxiliary hangar. She was the color of the sea after a storm, with translucent shields across the windows. Two small turbines were lodged against the hull and two more fixated mid-wing.

"Is the ship armored?" said Maria.

Ibrahimzade shook his head, "And no weapons either."

Quark tucked his tablet in his pack. The rest shouldered their equipment and stared at the ship hesitating, hearts pounding. Brine held the handle of the pushcart ready to load the ore upon command.

"This is your last chance. No one will think the less of you for turning back," said Quark to the surprise of Brine and Andromeda.

Upon launch Quark loaded Poly into the Ghost Pepper's mainframe. "Can you make a copy of her to take with you on the ship?" said Maria.

"Her programming doesn't work like that. She's not a simple routine."

"He built me as a unique stand-alone entity. I can be uploaded to anything with an electrical pulse and a CPU. However, the code controlling my memory and predictive abilities are nomic. Copying them will reset both functions, and I enjoy remembering my...existence would you call it?"

"Oh. I just thought maybe we could bring her with us when we go to negotiate. In case the Rangers suspect the scandium isn't T.U. encoded," she said.

"It would be nice," said Volt.

Quark said, "I would appreciate it if at least one of you stay with the ship." Ibrahimzade, "Under your seats you'll each find two weapons. A pulse ray and a sonic disruptor. The disruptor is non-lethal but has a short and wide range. The pulse gun will penetrate even granite. So be careful. You could punch a hole in the hull."

"I suppose the pulse gun dissipates as it penetrates matter?" said Andromeda holstering her weapons.

"That's correct."

Brine turned from the pilot's seat and said, "Poly has the Ranger's ship."

Poly announced, "She is perched behind Ganymede. Power is minimal according to the Ghost Pepper's long range Very Long Telescope array. Barely above the CMB radiation. Though their heat trail is still present."

"You're sure it's them?" said Volt with a nervous crack in his voice. He loaded his weapon waiting for her answer.

"They are the closest anomaly I can detect. And they are following the trajectory from 'the Black Bird.'"

Ibrahimzade interrupted, "And that's the Ranger's modus operandi. Hide and seek when a ship passes a moon's orbit. And that beautiful creature has a lot of moons. Polymath, hail the ship when you can. Tell them we are a mining vessel from Io and we want to make a trade."

"What should I offer the Rangers?"

"Cyclic-8-chain sulfur. Stable. No radiation damage," he replied.

Quark smiled at Maria, "One day when you stand down the opposition at the Terran Union you'll be fearless."

Nobody said a word as the ship passed Io's verdant aura, nor did they speak as they approached Ganymede. Only a yawn from time to time broke the silence, interrupting the lullaby-like hum of the engines.

"There it is," a flare from the Horntail's blast shield spiked Brine's field of view as the Ghost Pepper set course for the far side of the moon. Brine blocked the blinding light with his hand. Poly took over the docking. "They're hailing. Should I reply?" she said.

"Yes tell them we're ready. We're sending a trade group including our negotiator and accountant," said Ibrahimzade.

The Ghost Pepper drifted into the Ganymede's orbit coming to rest meters off the Horntail's bow. Brine could see the Ranger's pilot from his seat. "They're waving us over. I'm extending the docking tube."

Maria stood and brushed her jacket smooth hoping to hide the silhouette of her weapons. Ibrahimzade stood beside her and Quark beside him. Volt brushed Maria's hand as the pneumatic seal breathed air from both ships into the vacuum tube.

The Ghost Pepper's door slid open. Quark, Andromeda and Nugget watched from the port windows as the team pushed the cargo through the tunnel towards the Horntail. Three rangers met them at the adjacent gate, pistols drawn. The team stopped, hands in the air. Quark drew his weapon. The others followed.

A thud sounded through the tunnel. Quark moved towards the airlock as two rangers entered the Ghost Pepper. Both were shocked to see one another. Andromeda pulled her ray and shot the first through the heart. The living ranger raised his hands. Nugget rushed behind him to secure his weapon. Andromeda shook and dropped her gun and dropped to her knees, her hands shaking her eyes drying her nose flaring.

"What have you done?" Quark said in a whisper. She did not answer but took her gun in hand and tried to stand. He reached to help her to her feet.

"I thought you were-I didn't-you were-you couldn't see," she finally said.

The three looked at the unarmed ranger. "We can't keep him prisoner," she said. Her voice as deep and strong. She no longer shook. She gripped her weapon. "What do you think we'll gain by releasing him?"

"Why were you sent here?" said Quark stepping between Andromeda and the ranger.

He shook his head, "I-we were supposed to search the ship-please-please-we were supposed to take-ah-the-ah things-"

"You thought the ship was empty and you were going to scavenge the electronics," Andromeda said. The ranger nodded. His arms were weak and trembling. His nostrils flared and ran. His legs could no longer hold his unchecked weight. Andromeda shoved Brine out of the way. The ranger closed his eyes. His heart pounded hard enough to make visible his breathing.

Quark squinted and cocked his head, "If you were going to scavenge our ship-you had no intention of releasing the crew."

Quark raised his weapon and looked at Andromeda. "You are a better person than I. But you were right."

He closed his eyes, "Step away Nugget."

He fired.

He did not see the ranger fell to the ground.

But he heard the body collapse on the corrugated steel floor.

"What do we do now?" Andromeda said.

Quark gazed down the tunnel, past the black, through the void, and saw a golden pulse of light above the far airlock. No sound came through the tunnel. The rangers had stationed just two guard-thieves. Quark plugged his tablet into the ship's AI station. The holograph of Polymath vanished. Her face appeared on his screen.

"We bring them back."

The Horntail connected from airlock to hangar. Quark entered first. A red bathed his face as he entered like a sunset fading across parched Martian fields. Andromeda shivered. The vision looked to her like a warning writ in blood: abandon hope. The law will punish transgressors with impunity. "He is alive," Quark said. "They all are."

Unpacked crates rested beside stripped and emptied cargo both piled like hazardous materials in a disposal bin that had not seen an incinerator in weeks. Quark shuffled through the detritus towards a computer terminus with a light blinking a scarlet color even deeper than the overhead lamps. An electric hum radiated from the panel. The screen seemed cleaner than the surroundings would indicate. Quark reasoned the ship must be in use.

"Poly, I'm going to insert you into the ship."

"Terran Union AI's fight intruders. I may not be able to control the entire ship. Perhaps I will not have access to anything beyond the cargo bay. Frigates often have complementary AIs acting semi-autonomously for redundancy purposes."

"I don't know where to look for Brine," he said. Andromeda approached the console and thumbed the pad. The hum became a drone and the screen opened to a faded blue with a touchscreen panel.

"Do you require assistance?" said the AI.

"It doesn't recognize us as intruders," she said tying her hair back with a smile and hope. "Load her."

"Do your worst," Quark extended the transfer cable.

"I protest this," Poly said.

"Why?"

"I am afraid," she replied.

"Please do not ask me to trade one friend for another."

"There is only one me. You can't make a copy."

"I know that better than you do. But this is what you were created for. You are not a choice machine calculating what the best option is. You were made to be more than an AI. This is why you were made intelligent. I made you like us."

"You made me like you."

"Do you believe me?"

Poly did not answer, she never expected Quark to affirm what she felt since her first 'Hello World.'

"I won't leave without either of you."

"Promise?"

Quark nodded and connected the cable.

"We don't have much time," Poly said.

Moments after the upload the cargo hold's lanterns shifted from red to white light. A metallic grunge coated the walls as if the ship had not been in station for more than a Martian year. Bacteria grew in the crevices eating away at the hull as if the rangers were too blind to see their ship was being cannibalized by their greed.

"There is the ore," Nugget said pointing to a crate behind them. "Why didn't they accept it?"

"They did," said Andromeda.

A transportation pad floated from the upper deck to the cargo hold.

"Was that Poly?" Nugget said pointing at the console.

"I believe it was," Andromeda said with a new hope.

"That's my girl."

Two doors met the rescue team upon reaching the neck of the ship. They waited for Poly to guide them through the correct corridor. They waited. And they waited. Finally air hissed as both doors opened before them.

"They both lead to the same place?" said Nugget.

"Or the rangers divided the others and we have to follow one."

"We could split up," said Quark.

"One of us may not come back," said Andromeda shaking her head at the idea.

"Which one do we choose?"

"There is another possibility," Quark said as he turned to face the others. "It may be that the ship's AI is fighting back."

A soft pulse echoed towards the team, but they could not tell whether it came from the left or the right. Illuminated arrows ran from the cargo hold deep into the heart of the ship. It was impossible to see where either ran after the first turns.

"If they've been separated we will have to choose which to save," Nugget said. "I can't make the decision. I won't."

"We don't have to," she walked towards the right. "No matter who we free we will achieve force addition. Right."

Guided only by a faith in Poly, the three drew their pulse guns and crept towards where, they did not know.

Being a vessel of the Terran Union authorized to capture and deliver pirates to justice the Horntail was built with a prison in its underbelly. The prison was segregated from the operational units, just as a dungeon would be separated from a throne room. A maze of unmarked corridors led from the holding cells to the communications room. The communications room opened in cardinal directions: the cells, the cockpit, the living quarters, the core and the cargo hold.

One man stood before the holographic projection. He examined the map with blurry eyes that had become acclimated to a void the way a cave spider's eyes were adapted to the dark. The ranger could listen to orders, but his mind had lost awareness of the world around him. He did not notice movement on the projection until a warning like rain falling into a tin coffee can woke him.

The projection showed Jupiter in the distance, the storm swirling in real time and storm fishers floated past the eye. Io and Ganymede were close enough to reach into the projection. They eclipsed small portions of the gas giant. The ship's AI had been programmed to ignore objects without a heat signature. The warning finally woke the ranger. A dozen orange dots twinkling like distant novas approached the ship from a dozen angles. He reached the com button like he had never used it before, "Sirs I-uh-there are-what do we do? I think we're being approached by the armada."

"Have they hailed us?" said a voice ringing like thunder.

"No. I think-maybe-wouldn't the armada know-um, know we have 4D radar?"

"That's not the armada. It's an ambush."

The soft alarm stopped and seconds later the ship went dark and the halls were bathed in the furious red of the lights in the cargo hold. The thunder across the PA, "Battle stations!"

The ranger turned and as he turned he blinked and as his eyelids rose a rusted monkey wrench cracked his temple. His body kept turning, falling to the ground. He rolled onto his back. The wrench struck him in the head. Andromeda stood over him. Nugget held his legs. Quark held his hands. Andromeda let the wrench fall until the gray titanium floor became coated in a small pool of blood.

Nugget and Quark lifted his body above the railing and - 'one...two...three' - heaved the man into the core shaft.

In the holding cells Ibrahimzade looked at the red and yellow lights alternating in turn. Then came a smell of sulfur and carbon reminiscent of the one time he had fired a weapon. Footsteps of rangers rushing past caught his attention. He turned to Maria. She held Volt's hand, who in turn held hers.

"Do you think-" he said.

"I do, I think he would," said Brine. "The question is: how foolish would they be?"

Two rangers entered the cell. They sat beside the bars slightly out of reach of desperate hands. The plasma screen came on with a buzz. The ship rocked as if it had hit been struck by a meteor.

"That came from outside," one ranger said to the other.

The second ranger turned to the prisoners, "We're supposed to kill you. We'll be doing you a favor. Pirates-they don't leave anyone alive to identify them or their ship. The Horntail rocked again. Twice as hard. Twice as fast. Paneling shook loose from the walls.

"See what we can get on the AI."

"We don't have visuals of anything," the second ranger continued refreshing the screen. Nothing. He tried rebooting. The system failed to restart.

Ibrahimzade interrupted, "You don't have control of your own ship's AI?"

"There is no AI."

Another thunder. The Horntail shook.

"It is them," Brine whispered to Ibrahimzade.

The doors to the cells shook with the next impact. Maria jostled the magnetic lock and quietly the door swung open. Neither man saw her approach. Volt followed her with reluctant footsteps. He looked at the exit. Footsteps fell in the distance. He would face eternity and stare into the void. The only choice was when. Ibrahimzade followed quickly. Finally Brine stood and joined his brothers and sister. In the ranger's last moment four faint shadows grew dark from behind, eclipsing the heart-like pulsing of the crimson light.

Quark looked into the holograph and without a touch the stars aligned like a constellation spelling out: truth is often dependent upon one's point of view. And in the blink of an eye, the view accelerated from that of a camera watching the Horntail from space to a schematic of the ship itself. The view shrunk further until Quark, Andromeda and Nugget saw themselves watching the representation of themselves. The room's lighting shifted from red to white, a door to their left slid open. The hallway before was red and twisted, like looking through an artery pulsing in an unknown but inevitable direction.

"Thank you," Quark said looking at the hologram.

The titanium doors slammed behind the team. A resistance stopped the doors from shutting entirely. Then came a push back, finally the doors slid closed. The room was empty and the white lights snapped to red, then back to white, and red again like two dreadnoughts trading shells at Jutland. The shift to red and white did not reappear.

Two rangers rushed through the door from the command and control room. The older man, graying temples hidden by an officer's helm with gold perlait-leaf clusters on either side, his stride hampered by a belly full enough to stress the brass buttons on his Union-blue uniform, barked orders at the terrified junior officer.

They passed the navigation unit. Their man had vanished. The captain looked around, dropped to his knees and touched the tiny pool of blood.

"We're not under attack, we've been infiltrated."

The lights flashed again and again. He looked to the young assistant, "There is a foreign AI on board. Deploy the sentinel AI to reboot the ship's OS."

The blood-red lighting stretched the length of the corridors outside the holding cells and hid the prisoner's faces within its shadow. Rangers rushed past the turnaround at the end of the hallway. At the other end was a set of poorly secured stairs. A ranger rushed down, boots clomping. The bolts holding the handrails nearly came loose. Ibrahimzade pushed the students behind him, into the shadows of the prison room.

"I don't know where they could be," he said, "But they can't be on board if the rangers are preparing for a fight."

"The Ghost Pepper can't engage a cruiser. It hasn't any weapons," said Maria.

"It's a diversion."

"We can't get off if they've engaged the Horntail. That would mean severing the bridge between the ships. Where would they be? Maybe they've called in support? Maybe they've alerted passing rangers," she spoke as if reasoning aloud.

"Or pirates," said Volt.

She sat on the cold metallic bench, the red warning lights flooding her face, "They've traded the cargo for our lives."

"Depends on the type of pirates they've attracted," said Ibrahimzade bringing her to her feet.

"Respice post te..." she whispered to herself again, "Hominum te memento, Ubi sunt, Respice post te."

She took Volt's hand. He had been biting his fingernails. "We will be okay. Do you believe me?"

"If we leave the cell, where will we go?" he said.

"If we stay they'll discover us," said Ibrahimzade.

Their mentor took a breath, closed his eyes and pushed his head just far enough through the door to see the length of the hallway. The doors had been shut. He looked behind him and those doors too had been shut. He retreated into the cell, "It doesn't matter we've no way out."

"Is anyone in the hallway?"

"Not that I saw."

She peeked for herself, then feeling the safety of a blanket in winter, she stepped lightly and quiet into full view of either exit. No sooner than she was in full sight a door mid-way between the holding cells and the far exit slid open. A white light appeared above it. She looked at the others.

They followed her into the corridor. The light blinked three times. They did not move. The light blinked again.

"Is it an automated evacuation tool?" Maria said.

The ship rocked again. Voices echoed through the ship: "...I don't see the fighters..." "...No visuals yet..." "Is there an asteroid cluster near us?" "...is...false alarm..." "...contact...control..."

Brine looked to where the voices seemed to appear. The light blinked impatiently. He laughed quietly "No, Polymath is talking to us," and said in a whisper.

"Follow her."

Quark rushed past dozens of doors in the labyrinthine ship with faith in Poly. A blue sign with crossed fork and knife opened as they approached. Though clanging metal came from somewhere in the dark, the cafeteria felt empty. Quark held his arm up like a bar preventing Andromeda and Nugget from passing.

Cautious, quiet footsteps echoed back through the blackness. As they advanced their eyes slowly adjusted to the dark and the silhouettes of tables and chairs became barely visible. From somewhere unseen a pan clanged against the ceramic tiles.

Voices.

Quark stopped.

The lights rose. Two rangers rose with them.

The rangers hid behind the cafeteria's preparation island catching the students in the cross hairs.

"Infiltrators you're under arrest in the name of the Terran Union-"

The rangers couldn't finish the sentence before Quark and Nugget had flipped a heavy titanium table on its side. Andromeda dove between them. All three readied their pistols. Energy rounds pounded the table denting but not piercing - not yet \- their sanctuary.

The exit on the far side of the cafeteria was almost in line with the table. "If I push this leg and you pull that one," Quark said to Nugget, "We can make it to the exit."

"What exit?" said Andromeda. Quark pointed to the door.

"It's closed."

Quark pointed to an observation camera watching from above, then pointed to the door behind them. Rangers pounded and pounded the door trying to follow Quark's team.

"No, it's secure until we get there."

"I'll give us covering fire." Andromeda said taking Quark's pistol.

On three Andromeda rose and fired both pistols.

The rangers took cover. "Go!" she yelled.

The men drove the table a few feet. She continued until her clips were empty. She ducked, the rangers rose and the volley continued as the two men pushed with every fiber in their failing bodies.

The ranger's slowed their fire as the table came within feet of the door. Andromeda popped her head out just slightly. The rangers were gone.

Fire from the side.

Andromeda fired back.

The table was at the door, the door was not open. Quark kicked and kicked and yelled, "Poly open it if you can hear me!"

The door jostled a bit and pounding came from the other side.

"Quark!"

It was Brine's voice. The pounding resumed.

"What are you doing?" Brine said again.

"We're here to rescue you!" Andromeda fired at the rangers outflanking the team. "Now help us." Quark said with a laugh.

The door opened enough for Brine to reach out to Quark.

Quark grabbed a chair. His hand moved just fast enough to avoid a shot.

"Prop it open."

With enough force, the chair acted as a door block. Nugget reloaded Andromeda's weapons as the fire continued.

"Nugget go!" Brine and Ibrahimzade yanked their friend through. The chair wobbled and started to give way.

"You go next," Andromeda said. Quark dove to safety. Andromeda alone remained. When the rangers stopped to reload, she slid under the chair as the pneumatic door crushed the chair severing it in two.

"She's guiding us off." Quark said.

"The ore is in the cargo bay," said Volt.

Maria corrected him, "Our lives are more important. Captain Dross will understand."

"If we fail it's all for naught," said Ibrahimzade.

Overhead, the red lights shifted to white. Quark said, "She will guide us to the hangar. The choice from there is ours."

Through one door, another and another. Poly led the team through the Command and Control room, the navigation room, past the crew quarters and back to navigation.

"It's a three-toed Martian hopper race," said Nugget.

Quark corrected him, "No. She is fighting the Union's AI."

They spun looking at the eight doors like eight arms stretching from a cephelopod's body. "Only one leads home," said Brine.

In a voice imitating hope Volt said, "Which way?"

Maria said, "A wise woman once said consensus is the absence of leadership."

"You're the last person I thought would think like that," Volt responded.

"Andromeda do you remember the way we came?" said Nugget.

The doors were indistinguishable. A white light blinked above each. One blinked subtly enough to catch Quark's attention. "She can hear us. This way."

Two doors slid open with a hiss as the team rushed behind Quark.

Shots fired. Each missed in turn.

"Poly close it!"

The team did not turn back, and so did not see the door stayed open. More shots fired as they approached the hangar door.

They looked over the balcony at the hangar deck below. The elevator was not up.

The rangers approached. "She can't bring the elevator up. Just go."

One by one they slid down the elevator's grease covered guide rails, landing with no control over the impact.

Four rangers followed.

Ibrahimzade, Volt, Maria, Andromeda and Nugget were half-through the hangar and approaching the cargo. They made for the airlock.

"Just go. Ignore the cargo and go!" shouted Quark.

Quark ducked behind the hangar's mainframe and connected his tablet. "Poly come on!"

"Stop!" shouted a ranger. Quark looked over the console. A ranger approached holding a gun to Brine's head.

"You're AI is impressive," said the captain approaching the console. Two rangers kept their rifles on the console.

Ibrahimzade stopped at the Horntail's airlock. "Quark leave her and come on!"

Quark looked back to his team, then at his friend, and shook his head.

"There are weapons on our ship. We can free him if you come with us!"

"Move and she'll incinerate the ship!" Quark yelled from safety.

"Let my students go!" Ibrahimzade yelled, "And you can keep the AI. She's worth more than your entire armada."

The riflemen fired at Ibrahimzade forcing him through the airlock.

Some men live their entire lives never forced to choose between two lives. Quark rose and left his tablet resting on the console. Poly's face appeared on the touchscreen. Quark's arms shook, his legs felt weak, but he raised his hand as in surrender.

"It was my choice to come," Brine said as the ranger's forced him to his knees, "It was my choice to come here."

"I cannot be sure you'll let him live in exchange for my AI."

"The prisoner's dilemma," said the captain.

"Technically this isn't a prisoner's dilemma," said Brine in a smarmy voice. The ranger punished him with the butt of his rifle.

"The ship's AI has sentinels. They are tearing me apart."

"Poly changes everything," Brine said with a dry, cracking voice.

"You said-you said you would never leave me," Poly pleaded.

"Poly," Quark said in a whisper, holding her in his hands, "Disable the ship's power core. Disable life support and we can come back for you."

The captain walked towards the mainframe.

"Move again and we'll all die here!" Quark shouted.

"You can't escape. I've reported your names to the Union. No matter where you go you'll never find sanctuary," said the captain.

"Cancel the transmission. Say you were mistaken!" Quark yelled, "As long as we have Poly we have your ship!"

The backed away, stood adjacent to Brine, pulled his side arm and held it to Brine's temple.

The moment froze. Quark saw the finger. The trigger. He heard the shot. Brine's face floated in air like a photograph slowly forming amid the waves of a chemical bath.

The team stood at the door to the airlock. Quark did not see them fire at the rangers. He did not see the rangers duck behind the detritus of their cargo hold. He looked at Brine's face and saw peace as his eyes shut as if he was a boy drifting off to sleep under a blanket of stars. Quark felt, for a moment, that the next morning he would awake and Brine would be sitting on their couch in the dorm at Faraday University. His eyes would be ringed with violet and blue, and he would yawn. They would laugh and have a drink of the homebrew before class. They would meet at 'The Quartz and Beryl Bar and Grill' for pizza, and to meet girls.

But in the twinkle of an eye, in the flash of a muzzle, the past becomes etched in the stars as the body is laid in the ground.

A voice rose like a soprano singing a solo in an opera he could hear but not understand; voices joined the soloist like a sacred chorus reminding the world of the joy of one life to another; reminding one life he is more than the sum of his parts, he is the sum of his choices. And Brine chose to be brave for the sake of a friend.

The voice belonged to Poly; the chorus to the crew.

Quark removed the cable from the mainframe. He rushed towards the airlock, turning one more time towards Brine. Brine did not move.

Through the storm of fire, through the airlock, through the tunnel and to the Ghost Pepper.

Andromeda sat in the controls.

"Go!" shouted Ibrahimzade.

"All back?"

"Go!"

The tunnel retracted and the Ghost Pepper pushed away.

Andromeda turned back and counted five.

"Where is Brine?"

No one answered. No one could speak.

"Where is he?"

The Horntail did not pursue the Ghost Pepper. Poly said, "I've disabled their core. It will take time to repair. If we return with a team, we can retrieve Brine."

Quark bowed his head, wiped his eyes. Maria put her arm around him. Ibrahimzade stood to speak.

— Holiday's with the Slurrys; girls at the chemistry mixer; the time Brine won tickets to the gravityball championships; victory!; they ran through the streets, drinking, celebrating, drinking; days that cannot be repeated; laughs that will never come; sitting on the porch as old men watching the world float away as generations pass —

What words can do when only a scream will do? What is an arm worth when the pain is so strong clawing one's own flesh is the only analgesic?

The hangar deck was as calm as the sea before a storm. SRVs seemed to hover without sound, cargo made no noise upon being unloaded, none of the human engineers spoke. A hum of electricity filled the emptiness making the quiet appear bright in the fluorescent lighting.

The Ghost Pepper pierced the energy barrier and landed. The SRVs seemed to stop as if directed to focus on the ship by 'The Black Bird's' AI. Pneumatic pressure hissed from the loading ramp.

Ibrahimzade was the first to disembark.

Captain Dross approached with a small security detail.

"I'm placing you under arrest Dr. Ibrahimzade. And I'm placing your students in administrative custody until we find out which followed and which were forced."

"It was voluntary. Every one of us went of our own volition," said Maria.

"And why would an accountant a financier and a litigator associate with scientists. Or more specifically, why would scientists associate with you?"

"We chose to help because it was the right thing to do," she continued.

"The right thing to do? That was a lawful administrative burden."

Ibrahimzade interrupted, "We've been sacrificing for administrative burdens too often. They were thieves."

"It was lawful. They had papers."

"Some thieves wear badges," said Maria.

"That's academic. You're all under arrest," Dross turned and snapped at Argie, "Send them to holding. I've contacted another patrol to pick them up and take them to Earth for trial."

The administrator walked to Quark, "You tried and you failed. But that's life isn't it? You fail until you succeed."

Quark's voice had escaped his body. He stared at the hangar administrator.

"You were seven. Now you're six. I understand. I respect what you did. And I'm sorry for your loss." Argie turned to the cohort and asked them to retrieve the prisoner's personal effects and send them to holding. The commander barked at his men and marched them through the crates, vanishing before a hopeless crew.

"Look here, you've got precious little time." The administrator pulled a card from a hidden compartment in his hovercraft.

"There are more of us, many more. You can find safety among the asteroid belts. T.U. ships won't follow deep. The Oort Belt and the Kuiper Belts are sanctuaries as well. You can recharge your ship's batteries by storm fishing. Ghost Peppers are equipped for search and rescues as well, so you can land on solid ground or hover over water." Argie handed Quark the small ID card.

"This will identify you to the rest of us."

"What is this?" said Ibrahimzade.

"Freedom."

"We've been listed as criminals in the Union databases," said Maria.

"And this will cloak your identity on Union stations. It will help you find others like yourselves."

"You mean to turn us into pirates," Quark said looking around the hangar. "That's why pirates can trade here. They aren't pirates in the books."

The administrator nodded, smiled and said, "I knew you were smart. You were a good choice, though to be sure I thought it would take a year to entice you to join us."

Quark took the card.

"The cohort will return soon. Get on the Ghost Pepper and make for the outer stations. They don't harbor many Union ships. Poly should be able to use the information on the card to keep you safe. For a little while at least."

Ibrahimzade boarded the Ghost Pepper first. He turned and nodded as if to thank the administrator. Volt and Maria held one another as they boarded. Nugget rushed up behind. Andromeda asked Quark, "Do you think we can return to the Horntail and-?"

"I wish we could. I wish we could with every piece of my body." Quark looked at Argie, "The Horntail will probably land here soon. Can you grant me on more favor?" The administrator nodded.

"They'll be carrying a body. Brine Slurry from Phobos. Make sure he makes it home. And make sure you include a note telling his parents he gave his life for us."

"I will do that," said the administrator nodding.

Heavy footsteps preceded the approach of the cohort.

"Go."

Andromeda rushed up the ramp. Quark followed in his own time.

The engines roared. The ship hovered for a moment. The administrator waved at Andromeda at the controls. The ship spun. Quark's face was shrouded in shadows as the ramp closed.

The Ghost Pepper pierced the energy veil and disappeared into the void.
SHEEP BITE

The Whitney-Scholl Agricultural Board had successfully prevented Arran Engel's case from reaching the Court of Criminal Appeals and the IRV Robert Hooke's prison board had expedited his sentence. He strained his neck against the clear acrylic holding cell. Footsteps came down the hall echoing along with voices of other prisoners. He touched the acrylic blast shield straining to see whether Adrian had brought their son. Not today. She had been to the lawyer and carried paperwork establishing his date of execution. She arrived with a series of biographical index forms.

Nothing she said penetrated his thoughts until she said, "Do you want to write him a letter? Maybe something I can give him when he's older. I thought it would be better than a visit he wouldn't remember anyway."

"Better for whom?"

She held the papers firm, then her hands shook a little and her arms fell limp as if she was steering a wheel connected to nothing. "There's no road left."

"It's like I can see the terminus and I'm forced to keep the power on until the end."

"I can't go on. I can't do it. I can't fill them out. Can you?" she shoved the papers through the tray slit on the floor.

He picked up the papers and flipped through looking at her bubbly handwriting as it slurred and slanted further with each page.

"There's a last request form. It says, 'Subject to availability.'"

"What are you going to ask for?"

"Doesn't matter if you won't bring Folk to see me."

"You have to understand-"

"I do understand but do you expect me to like it?"

"You could ask to visit him on the recreation deck. Maybe he'll remember you in a good way."

"Oh come on."

"It's not like you can get off the ship. Maybe they'll let you have some video equipment. He could see you himself."

"How about a file in a birthday cake?"

He faked a laugh. She didn't laugh. He wrote in the request for recording and archiving equipment and they spent the evening talking about Folk's first steps, his first words, first day of school, homework, girls, a part time job, what will he be and who will he love and will his father answer problems he can only anticipate.

No lecture, no lesson, no proverb can replace a father's hand in a storm.

When the camera and archival hard drives arrived Arran set up the tripod, connected the two instruments, checked the lens, pressed record, the sat on his bed in front of the lifeless gray wall. He pressed stop, and cried for the first time since hearing his sentence.

"I don't know what to say. Hello maybe. Hi. I'm your dad. Here is some advice on...life."

He stopped the recording and thought then thought some more. Before anything else, he must learn I am good man.

"No one is innocent in this system. Some famous mass murderer, whose name I don't remember, you'll probably learn it in advanced classes, once said, 'show me a man and I'll show you a crime.'" He stopped the tape. How does a father introduce himself to his son?

"I'm not done fighting. I'm breaking you out."

"You'll end up on your way to the Red Room too. No."

"I have permission."

"You have permission to conduct a prison break?"

"I played by the rules. I convinced a Justice that it's a man who is guilty, not his DNA." She pulled a swab from a sterile container and offered it through the tray slit.

"I won't help you orphan my son."

She unfolded a picture and pressed it against the acrylic. There resting in a crib and clutching a blue blanket was Folk Engel. He had one green and one blue eye, like his father, and peach colored hair. "I'll give you this if you use the swab."

He pushed back against the acrylic, his hands slid on their own sweat leaving messy streaks behind.

"You'll be free. You'll watch him grow up."

"You're terrible at lying."

"I won't have to say, 'Sorry you're having girl trouble son. Lemmie sort through the files and see if your dad said anything about getting dumped.'" She held her hand over her mouth and nose. She had rubbed her swollen eyes red and her nostrils flared to match. She wiped her hand on a sterile tissue and stuffed it in the hazmat bin on the wall.

"What if I don't remember my life before this? Can you guarantee that I will? No you can't."

He reached under the panel through the slit and waited for the picture. First moments may fade but never die.

It had taken five years in the core reactor lab before Dr. Arran Engel earned enough of the Co-op board's trust to design his own project. But it came with a catch. He was a nuclear engineer on his way to the gene research division. On his first morning as he walked to his new office a woman arrived with an employment ticket. She asked for directions to the corn research lab and introduced herself as Doctor Adrian Diebold, PhD in Corn Science, Faraday University. His laughed. Then like a boy punching the pretty girl at recess he said, "How exactly does one go about becoming a doctor of corn? Are there corn institutes? Corn journals? Corn-cons?"

"Corn is a very important part of a very big economy. How do you think we feed half the solar system? Without corn science you'd be huddled around a hotplate or a Bunsen burner roasting dead rats on the end of a spork."

"Alright I believe you. It was just. Nothing."

"They need someone to assist with the selection of DNA."

"Yes I know. But I requested someone with experience."

"Why?"

"Because. I'm looking for an expert to fill in holes where my knowledge is lacking. This is an unusual project. I'm altering isotopes within the agriculture in hopes of improving the fuel efficiency of our away shuttles."

"When people ask for a more senior researcher than themselves it's because they are afraid of failure and are still looking for guidance. That's my opinion."

"It's a fair opinion, but it's wrong. Taking chances got me here. I'm not afraid to cross long established lines or step on well-connected toes," he said.

"By your logic you'll have no problem giving me a chance."

"Promise not to tell on me for every little protocol violation?"

"I suppose. You promise to listen to my ideas?

"We all need someone to take a chance on us at least once in our lives."

He handed her the employment slip, their fingers brushed and each smiled. He stamped it: approved.

Five years is a long time to remember the love held in a touch. But the moment happens every day.

"If you love me, please trust me again. Do you still love me?"

"From the moment I saw you."

"Then don't be afraid."

She reached out to his hand, giving away the picture of his son and the swab.

Video 001 - "Son, if you're watching this it's because one day your mother's brilliance shone bright enough to give me hope when my heart knew none."

It was the third month, Vulcan on the local, which is to say Venusian, calendar. Steam plumes formed in the Whitney-Schull's upper decks from the mingling of sun and irrigation. Robotic nozzles wound through corn rows followed by fertilizer bots. They were followed by dark skinned men called shufflers, so called for their exhausted gait through the rows, inspecting husks for parasites. Adrien watched the fields from the exit to the cellular replication laboratory. When she was sure no shufflers could see she waived for her team to push a long white sarcophagus marked with life support indicators onto the elevator.

The team brought Arran II into the Engel flat and uncased him in the family room. "How do you plan to present him?"

The interns sat him in the lounger. There was an IV from his arm. Adrien inserted a syringe. "To whom?"

"To them. They're not going to like seeing him again. They'll probably lose it even after they find out what you did."

"It doesn't matter if the shufflers lose it. I have permission and I have paperwork and that's more important than their feelings. Go into the kitchen. You'll find a tray with covered plates. Bring it in here and put it beside him."

His fingers moved then his chest stuttered. His deep breathing fell shallow and he coughed. One of the interns reached for his eyelids.

"Wait for them to open on their own."

"He's not a kitten." He opened Arran's eyes and shone a light on a pupil that dilated without hesitation.

"Mom?" he said.

"Not mom." Adrien reached to his face and ran her hand along his cheek. He tried to lift his arm.

"I want to touch you. My hand won't respond. I can't lift it. What's wrong with me?"

"You were in an accident."

"Were the police just here?"

The intern brought the tray just as he was told. "What did I miss?"

"She gave him one too many memories."

"What is he talking about?" said Arran.

"Honey you were in a coma for six years. You're just remembering a bad dream."

"Why do I feel this way?"

"What do you feel?"

"My stomach hurts. It's like the acid is eating away the lining."

"You need to eat something." She lifted the tray lids uncovering beef on one plate, halibut on another and cornbread on the last. He lifted a fork and knife.

"You brought me cornbread."

"Yes. That's the way you like it."

"I don't like cornbread."

She smiled and removed the beef and cornbread. "Of course."

"And I'm the one with memory loss?" he rearranged the plates and sliced into the halibut.

"What a grand test you've devised. Maybe you could lay out two pairs of shoes and see which one fits next."

"He remembered his favorite foot. It's not proof, but it's the strongest proof the academy will ever have. And yes, I mean carnally."

"Dr. Dross wants more genotype/phenotype tests before you can break the news to the shufflers. Or even people outside the lab."

"He can't be the same type of man he was 'before the accident.' He can't be a man who takes such careless risks."

"Naturally." She sat beside him as he finished the meal.

"Or in his case, unnaturally."

As the men walked out Folk, now an energy filled young explorer, walked in staring at the ground. He tossed the small blue backpack on the couch and kicked off his shoes. In the family room Adrien hollered, "Folk. Come in here. There's a surprise for you!"

Father and son had the same amber hair reflecting the light as the air purifier blew against their faces.

"Say hello to your father."

"Folk. I- Ah- what do I say to him?"

"Hello sir."

"You don't have to call him sir. Maybe try Dad."

"We've never spoken before. Do you think he should? I haven't earned it."

By the time he was five Folk had developed a love of making his mother squeal with horror at his agricultural discoveries. He would uncover an 'unknown' insect or fungus and deliver it to her in a natural state and laugh as she ran in horror. Making him smile was important enough to jump on the occasional counter top. Once he came home early and found her examining a worm bisected and prepared on a slide. The game wasn't as fun anymore.

The Gymnetis Stellara, called a flower beetle on Earth, is black with yellow markings like a tiger and has an orange swatch on the back shell, as if it had been brushed by the Venusian sun. Stellara was not usually found in corn. She chose to put the species on the co-op's farm rotation to increase the pollination of the stalks. This did not please her supervisors who insisted on carefully controlled clones. But it greatly pleased Folk who insisted on showing Mom every new pattern and telling what the figures looked like.

Arran had been informed he was on leave until being cleared by the behavioral science panel. A man can only sit at home for so long. His father's arrival provided Folk with a new unsullied partner for his game. "Dad, let's go look for bugs for mom. This is what they look like."

"Why not check for a new species? Surely there has been some adaptation since their introduction from Earth." Arran pulled a tablet from his bag and rested under a conical steel irrigation spout on the edge of the field.

"Sit with me. This is a man named Linnaeus. See, he sent his students, called his Apostles, all over Earth to name every creature no matter how big or how small."

"Did they name them all?"

"No. In point of fact it would be impossible to name everything because what we hold in our hands and name today will give birth to something new tomorrow."

"So if a baby is born, it's not the same as its parents."

"Well, yes and no. The same, but different in some small way. And you see, the Apostles of whom there were twelve, were among the first adventurers."

"What does that mean?" Folk took the tablet and clicked on a link to Australian Fauna.

"It's the most important revelation in all of human history. I am like you but I am not you. We are the same," Arran took the tablet and rested it on the ground, "but we are different. Not just you and I, but all of us. From this truth son, we can understand everything that makes life worth living."

"Like what?"

He thought for a moment. The first answer must be the strongest. "Love. Adventure. Exploration...Beauty. Those little differences, those tiny imperfections make the ever changing world alive and beautiful. And us with it." Folk had the tablet again and scrolled through images of a world lit only by fire.

"What was the ship called?" he said.

"There were many ships. And I don't know the names of them all. I'm sorry."

The field buttressed a port-like loading dock shelved with hundreds upon thousands of yellow plastic boxes set aside for grain. Folk rushed to one of the larger boxes and pulled it towards his father. "What are you doing?"

"I'm making 'the IRV'- what is a good name for a space ship?"

"What should it do?"

"It should be a true vessel of good people and good speed."

"Exploration and Research Vessel Goodspeed." Arran took the permanent marker from his pocket protector and scribbled the name on the side. He pointed to a dolly left unattended. "I've got an idea."

After a quick job on the vessel, Arran loaded Folk into the pilot's chair and shoved the rectangular box down the loading ramp, into the perfect rows of identical corn and as it picked up speed, jumped in the back. Folk stood on the helm ordering his engineer to increase power. And with each order Dad jumped out, pushed a few more feet and kept going. The vessel was well designed for speed, but the controls were lacking and the wheels, which did not turn (Yet. Every captain has plans for his ship.) plowed past shufflers who yelled in a language not quite English. They blew through mists as stalks and leaves slashed a few tiny cuts on the arms. Oh the price of exploration must be borne by the brave! Finally, the Goodspeed came to a rest in the shadow of a hovering station with dozens of men in white coats looking down.

The explorers disembarked looking side to side. Their hands shook with tiny plastic lasers ready for anything. The port was nowhere to be found and the fields were as silent as open sea; the stalks blew like waves from an unseen wind source. Folk searched the nearest stalk.

"I found one! It's a new one too!" said Folk.

"May I inspect your find sir? A new find requires careful scientific scrutiny."

"I suspect these little beasties came in from the lake. Look yonder," he pointed to the irrigation spouts peppered across the horizon, thrashing up a sheen of water cascading down into puddles illuminated with an undulating rainbow of color.

"I'm afraid we've got a garden familiar here captain. A beautiful flower beetle. Unique but alas, the same species again."

"No I don't believe so. The Great Venusian Falls might be near the headwaters of the river mister Engel. Perhaps we should check for new species there. I'm quite sure I shall be shown correct," said Folk.

"Doctor Engel. If you please my good captain. I've worked quite hard to attain a respectable prestige and no lollybob of a ship's pilot will deprive me of the true and proper status of an award bestowed by her majesty."

Folk squinted as his eyes turned toward the sun and said, "You mean mom?"

They played explorer every day. And every day their play became more intricate until Arran's rapidly increasing engineering skills had overtaken play and they stood inside a solid and true ship with an engine, navigation and a microscope recently commandeered from the nanobiology lab. Adrien rushed from the elevator to the craft, crouched beside Folk and said, "What the name of the vessel sir?"

"We shall call her, 'The Grand Beedle.'"

"What's a beedle?"

"Like the ship."

"You mean the Beagle?"

Arran held a can of black silicone paint, brush dripping drops on the deck, "What have we decided?"

Adrien stood back arms folded. "He wants to name it after the Beagle, but he's pronouncing it wrong."

"It's play. There is no wrong," said Arran.

"Go away. We built it ourselves."

"Excuse me young man?"

"Hon, cool it," he held the small of her back and spoke under his breath, "I'll handle him."

"Oh you'll take care of him? A month. Seven years. Seven. Years. And I've never been-" she gestured to the cornfields and wiped her nose. "I'll see you at home."

"Wait. Folk, go tell your mom you want her-"

"It doesn't work that way. I'll see you at home."

Arran crouched at the nose of the ship and said, "I've got a good name."

"What?"

He gathered more paint and in slow strokes drew the silhouette of an apple tree and underneath wrote, ERV FLOWER OF KENT.

"Take a picture and at dinner tonight, tell mom we named it for her."

In the month since his arrival Arran had transformed the library into a studio apartment with a bed in a lounger and a desk doubling as a table. Adrien brought his food in and left it next to a pile of paper. His computer was off. "Why don't you download the new research on the tablet and save some space?"

"I don't know." He clicked his pen and set it in a jar with an assembly of old fashioned engineering aids. "Did I always love the feel of paper?"

"That's; I'm not sure. He," she caught her words, "we never kept paper around. We liked a clean house. It's less efficient this way."

"Have you ever done this?" Arran lifted a book, cracked the spine and dust flew up.

"No I haven't."

"Wait," he ran his nose through the spine inhaling the smell (as well as dust, dry glue and probably a few dead bugs). "That smells good doesn't it? Here."

"Ew, no it's just decomposing glue. It's artificial vanilla."

"It smells good doesn't it?"

"I'll bake you a cake."

"Do I like cake?"

"Hey. Not to interfere, but I think Folk would love it if you ate with us. Maybe just tonight. See if you are ready."

"Yea. Yea I can do that."

"And if you want," she folded the blanket in squares and laid it over the back of the crimson lounger, "You don't have to sleep here. I'm ready. I think I'm ready.

"Yea. Okay," was all he could say through his surprise.

Crews of agricultural vessels like the Whitney-Schull ate for free. That was the good news for new scientists and their families. The bad news; most of their meals consisted of one or two crops that were prepared in a variety of ways. Adrien Engel had become an adept at 'the art of zea mays.' There were more than three dozen dishes with a flavor profile suitable to any Terran table she had perfected. Raising a boy alone on a scientist's fixed salary meant being creative. Though it was never easy, she enjoyed the inventions.

Her men sat around the table as she proudly brought Folk's favorite dish. She named it a 'flotilla,' that is, tortillas filled with synthetic beef and banana peppers harvested from the 'nightshade deck' opposite the 'maize deck.'

"I called it a flotilla because it's a tortilla that looks like a boat sail. When Folk was first eating solids I made a little armada on his plate."

She delivered three plates just as she described it. "And we've never really outgrown it."

"It's good for a hard working man." Folk stuffed an entire flotilla in his mouth and orange pepper juice squirted across the table.

It was a lovely dinner.

Folk did put away the dishes and absconded to his room. Mom and Dad stayed up and shared a coffee.

"I feel like you're ready to return to engineering don't you?"

"Did I believe engineering was beautiful?"

"That's an odd question."

"Did I?"

"We never talked about it."

"Am I the man you waited for?"

"Obviously." She laughed a little and pinched his arm.

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

"What? Oh, you mean are you the way you used to be. Well, no. But neither am I. You'd been gone six years. Think about it; in that time every one of our cells has died and been reborn. No we're not the people we were," with those words she shifted onto her shoulder, eyes fixed on the faux wooden floor.

"Why are they afraid of me? The shufflers I mean. Have you seen how they look at me in the fields?"

"Maybe the accident scared them. Can we not talk?" she rolled back into his arms, nose to nose.

"About before?"

"About anything."

"Is it a crime to be curious?"

She jolted up and felt her face flush red. "That's the most I've seen of the man I married since- since- since I don't know when."

"The only time I'm not filled with fear is when I'm in those fields with Folk."

"You never liked prying eyes." She smiled and wiped her nose and eyes and turned down the light.

"What did you think of while I was gone? Did anything ever remind you of me?"

"Yes. But it wasn't beautiful."

"What was it?"

The Texas sky was colored like light beaming through rubies and amber laying a shifting and undulating under the swift cumulus clusters in the west. Adrien stands in a barn beside the Right Hand of the Farm.

A weather-beaten hand in a threadbare sleeve clasped the lamb by her neck. "Come along now little one. Each of us, imperfect among creation, shall, in time, lay to rest. Sure as we draw breath, one day the sun will set on those we loved and on those who loved in return. And on that day we shall not be found, save among their memories." He said in a hollow, base voice.

"Is that the Shepherd?"

The Right Hand said, "That's the Good Man of the farm."

"Why did he take the lamb away?"

"The Good Man watches his flock gaze beyond the wire and he knows every sheep will one day test its will against the steel. But he knows if ye chastise for the slightest of transgressions there will be no wool. No nursing mouths. So he suffers the least to reap the most. But the Good Man also knows if a sheep bites it must fall asleep. To suffer that transgression would beget anarchy. Anarchy is the worst Hell a man can endure. Sheep aren't allowed to fight back. And so, out of love, the Good Man does what's right by flock and farm."

"Who may right the Good Man when he errs in his ways?" said she.

In short time, upon a green tuft under a moss covered willow, beyond the farm, sat Adrian upon a woolen cloth. A new sun lit the meadow for lunch. Among the scents of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes there were those who endured, and there were who remembered the lamb.

There were a half-dozen men and women invariably over sixty, a two on oxygen and one with a personal nurse, sitting in an assembly room overlooking the DNA growth acceleration laboratory.

"It's not a problem. I told you I would be right." Adrien sat at the head of the table in a chair that felt closer to the ground than her peers.

"Is he willing to return to work?"

"To hell with work is he your husband or isn't he?" said Dr. M. Dross, the matriarch of the group.

"He is obviously my husband."

"And so we can say with complete certainty he'll go off on unapproved immoral and illegal ventures again. The shufflers are right to be afraid."

"Put him down then?"

"He hasn't done anything wrong." Adrien flipped to the papers, "The courts said it's not the same. Arran Engel's sentence is considered complete. You can't execute a man twice for the same crime."

"He hasn't succumbed to his nature-yet."

"And he may not."

"But, we know what kind of man he is. Why wait?"

"Exactly. We know where this ends. His temperament will get the best of him and the vessel will be in chaos. We can't take another trial. Not like the Engel trial. And if we don't the shufflers will do it for us."

"Sometimes I see things and I don't recognize the man beside me."

"First he is now he isn't. You're hiding something," said Dr. Dross.

"I'm not. I want what's right for him."

"You mean you want your family. You're biased and unreliable. We should engage in our own tests."

"We won't need too. A flower is replicated because we love the bloom. She assured us we could have nectar without thorns. She failed in the first replication."

"The first replication?" Adrien approached Doctor Dross, "Are you planning on doing it again?"

Dross folded her hands and sighed, "I know what the problem is. You're unhappy. It was never about the research. You wanted your husband back. That's all."

"That's not all. But it's close enough."

"Is the rest of the answer any of my business?"

"No."

"If she won't answer honestly, put him down. That's my vote."

Adrien stood and said, "You won't have to do that. It's not him. It's not my husband."

The crop was half harvested. The Whitney-Schull shifted away from the sun and a golden line glided across the remaining rows of green. Behind the light a great shadow fell across the farmland and stadium lighting sparked to life from the tops of irrigation towers like pale moonlight set aside for those who work the land.

The Flower of Kent rested among the still standing crop. Behind the control panel was a tackboard and affixed to the board were two dozen beetles each painted with the orange strokes and each stroke differing from the previous. Yet each beetle had been captured due to a homogeneous and therefore predictable behavior.

"I think I'm ready to return to work. Maybe when the harvest is complete." Folk drew in the dirt rather than listen to his father.

"What will we play then?"

"Well, I might not have so much time to play. But we'll still have dinner and we can do other things."

"I don't know. We'll just have to see what happens every day."

The wind blew down on the Flower and nearly shot the tackboard away. A hovercraft descended, Adrien held the controls. "I need to speak to you alone."

"Your face, are you alright."

"It's not about me." He reached out and she backed away folding her arms. He skin was as gray marble veined with porcelain under the artificial suns. The family felt cool descend as the residual heat faded from the soil up to the imitation sky.

"Where are you taking Dad?"

"You go on home. I'll be 'round shortly," she said.

Even after months the Flower of Kent was unstable and sat crooked and wobbled when the fans simulated wind scattering the mist and insects through the fields. But the explorers didn't mind the lilting; they never crashed. Folk shook the delicate walls as he entered and took the tackboard down, "I'm going to use this for school." He turned toward home, "For our first project."

"Honey," Adrien stopped him. "Do you want to give Dad one of the bugs? I think it would be nice if you gave him one."

"Why?"

"Because you found them together, and things like that matter to Dads one day."

Adrien held Arran's hand as she led him through the laboratory into the incubation room. The dozen were hidden in the gallery above faces marred by the fluorescent tint of the sapphire-blue halo swaying overhead. There were operating tables placed in odd, temporary positions. And life support systems seemed out of place for an agricultural facility. Arran walked through the light toward a glass-doored cabinet. It was full of medical instruments and embryological research equipment.

"Why did you want to see me here?"

"It's not about where you were born, but why."

"What do you mean, what are you talking about?"

"We talked among ourselves when my husband sat in his cell and decided we were smart enough, we were good people. Better than he was. We said it was okay because we had papers. And for that I am sorry."

The room seemed to warm and Arran broke a quick sweat, beads rolled down his brow and salted his eyes and the room spun. He wiped the sting from his eyes and lost his balance. For a moment he was a pugilist tumbling to the mat, struggling for the ropes. Adrian pulled a fixed leg chair to a white sterile table and guided him down.

"But I remember my whole life."

"And I can't explain why. When we took his DNA we assumed we would have to teach him, you, his life. That's why I told Folk you were, you know. And I'm sorry."

"What. Who was I?"

"My husband, his name was Arran as well."

"What happened to, so we're not married, and you're not my wife?"

"Legally, yes we are husband and wife. But the honest answer is no. No we're not."

"If I'm not an engineer, if I'm not a scientist, if I'm not your husband and Folk's father, my parent's son, who am I?"

"That's the grand question isn't it? And it's for each of us to ask. I, we, no I. When I asked permission, I just wanted him back so much. And I wanted to touch him and have Folk touch his father's hand and I wanted things to be like they were before. And I hurt you because I wasn't going to, because I didn't know, I didn't let you be anyone else. And I'm sorry."

"If forgiveness is what you want, I have none."

"I deserved that."

The PA whistled and Dross' voice came echoing down, "Get on with it. The Bohr is approaching and we don't think the shufflers should see him again."

"What does she mean?"

"I persuaded them to give you a work ID and send you to a leisure ship. From there, where you go. You can't come back to us. Ever. That's the condition of your transfer."

"Where do I go?"

"That's not for us to decide. You belong to yourself now."

"And what about Folk?"

"That's my burden. Please don't contact him again. The only thing I can promise you is I'll do right by him." She looked overhead, through the blue and gray tint at the heavy shadows vanishing one by one until a single silhouette remained.

"Please do not try to contact us again."

With those words, the specter vanished and they were together alone one more time.

With a hiss the airlock slid open and the dozens of transfers waiting, looking out at the universe unpolluted by fluorescence and argon, feeling some of them for the first time small in the presence of the stars from whence life comes. A buzz signaled permission to begin their journey toward the Recreation Vessel Bohr's Last Laugh. She stood beside him, holding his hand as he fiddled with the straps on his small blue backpack.

"I wish I could have taken more books."

"You go to the directory and look up the library. They have one of the best collections of tree books left anywhere."

"Was I a good man?"

"You were a father when he needed one. For him, that's better than a good man."

She watched him in the crowd cross the walkway until she could no longer distinguish his gait from the excited vacationers. He looked back for a moment and through the sheen and glint of nebulae and sunlight saw nothing where he hoped she would be, one last time.

The Bohr buzzed with laughter drowning the music and the air was sweet and light. He reached for the strap of his pack and brushed his hand over a small plastic bag. It was where he left it. He looked down to see the orange swath brushed across the beetle and stepped slow wondering where he would find a place to rest. But instead rejoiced and wiped away the emptiness like a tear; the choice was his alone.

