Their remaining wages from working at the Institute – small though they were – allowed them to buy a dessert at a confectionery. They watched the people pass by on the main concourse – the level they were restricted to – with interest, and eavesdropped on any conversation between station personnel that they could. Mostly they heard talk of the desire to go down to the planet beneath them.

  After a time, they rose to look around some more.

  “Look, Sandra, here’s the exit to the life-pods, should disaster befall the station. Let’s go check it out.”

  Sandra came along willingly enough, but they soon came to a door that prevented them from actually seeing a life-pod station. On the door, the words “Authorized Personnel Only” stopped them. Larry sighed.

  “Looking for something?” asked a man’s voice nearby. They turned to see a short, dark-haired man in station maintenance garb.

  “We thought we might see a life-pod,” Larry replied.

  “Did you?” the man asked. “Why would you wish to?”

  “We’re on our way to Liberty, to farm,” Sandra explained. “We’ve never been in space before. We just wanted to see all we could see while we have a chance.”

  “Which won’t come again,” the man finished for her. “Yes, I understand. Come with me.”

  He pulled out a key, which turned off the alarm on the door, and beckoned to them. “No fear, I’m authorized, and can take people in if I want. I’ll just give you a quick tour. I’m Peter.”

  Too good an offer to pass up, they went forward, introducing themselves.

  “If the alarms ring,” Peter explained, “and they never have yet, barring an exercise, you would come through those doors, which would have opened automatically, and proceed this way. Each life-pod holds twenty-one people.” He stopped at an airlock – one of many that lined the hall. “Would you like to see inside?”

  “Yes,” the two said in unison.

  Peter grinned. “So, the alarm rings, and you come running – though they’ll tell you not to run – and through the door I brought you in. You keep on until you arrive at first of the airlocks, where twenty of you will line up, those following you heading for the next one. Your pilot opens the airlock,” he demonstrated, and the airlock opened to a small craft without windows, “and you file inside.”

  He led them in and pointed to the seats, one either side of the aisle, ten rows in all. They sat down at his suggestion, and he showed them how to fasten the restraints. “You bring only that which is most important to you – which you should already have in a case for that circumstance.” He opened a small overhead bin. “You place it up here.” He bid them unfasten themselves, and drew them up to the pilot’s seat, which was placed in the centre of the ship, just ahead of the first row.

  In front of it lay screens, now dark.

  “Anyone can pilot this,” he said. He grinned again, “Even farmers.”

  “It’s all automated?” Larry asked.

  “Correct.” Peter pointed to the switch, which had large red letters above it. “TURN ON.”

  “And you select from a list,” Sandra said, nodding.

  “Smart farmers,” Peter said. “Sit, young lady.”

  Sandra sat at the controls. At his urging she turned on the master switch. A screen lit. It contained a short checklist. “Ensure all passengers strapped in. Seal door. Ensure door sealed. Launch.”

  “You can’t launch until you have checked off the above. If the door hasn’t closed and sealed, you can’t launch.” He turned the switch to “Simulation”, and touched the screen where it said, “simulated launch”. A new screen showed, looking 3-D.

  “That’s your environment. The pod is the green oblong spot in the centre of the screen. There,” he pointed slightly to its left, “is the station we just left, and the other icons are other stations, satellites, ships.” He touched one, and letters popped up. “Family Trading Ship Venture”. “That’s a ship in orbit.” He touched another. “FTL-1”. “That’s another station, run by the Family Trading League.”

  Larry pointed to a list of commands. “And if we select, say, FTL-1 and touch the pilot icon, the boat will travel to that station, its radar allowing it to navigate past other objects, should they appear in its path?”

  “Exactly.” He looked at them. “Why are you two going to a farming world? I’ve shown other farmers this on occasion, but they mostly look at it like it’s advanced hyperspace theory.”

  “A long story,” Sandra said.

  “I’m indentured,” Larry added.

  “Ah. Well, anyway, that’s about all you need to know.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d better get back to work.” He reached over and returned the switches to their resting state. Before leading them out of the pod, he pointed out the other areas of interest. “Food bin. Water bin. Toilet.” Then he led the pair out of the pod.

  “Thank you, Peter,” Larry said. “That was great.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Sandra said.

  “It’s a break from my usual,” Peter said, with a wide smile. Then his smile disappeared. “If the alarms do ring, you grab your important possessions and move fast. Don’t wait for friends; don’t wait for orders. If you have to go back somewhere to pick up those important goods, don’t. If it’s nothing serious, if it’s only a drill, you can always get them later; if it is serious, you may not get to the pod in time. Nothing you may lose is worth your lives. Just get here, and get here fast.”

  The two youngsters nodded, suddenly sober. “We will remember,” Larry promised.

  Peter’s smile reappeared. “Good. We’ve never had an accident where life-pods were actually needed. We do launch them from time to time on exercise – to ensure they work properly. Only four fatalities on this station in the last five years, and they were due to medical incidents, not accidents. We run a safe station.” He opened the door and ushered them out, turned around and reset the alarm. “Go. Have fun.”

  They thanked him once more, and walked down the concourse.

  “Look, Larry, soldiers.”

  Larry looked. A group of six men in uniform approached. Two eyed him suspiciously. The lead soldier stopped them, and the others surrounded the pair.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” asked their leader, eyes cold.

  “Colonists,” Sandra replied. “Our ship is late. We’re exploring.”

  “Colonists should stay in their quarters,” the leader said, those pale, cold eyes looking at them without emotion. Then he and the others continued on.

  “What was that all about?” Sandra asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s get back to our quarters,” Larry replied. “I didn’t like the way they looked at us.”

  “Neither did I.”

  Halfway back, another group of soldiers appeared from the shuttle-docking area that they had come in on. They stared at them. Neither had seen armed soldiers before. They’d not seen many soldiers of any sort back in Felson. At least forty trooped out.

  One of them looked their way, and said something. Three began walking towards them, but another soldier intercepted them first.

  He smiled at them. “Hi there. There’s been a little difficulty, and we’re here to make sure everything stays safe. I think you should probably go back to your quarters.” He gave a little wink. “If you turn and go quickly, they’ll think I just tore a strip off you, and they’ll probably leave you alone. Go now; go quickly.”

  “Something’s wrong,” Larry said, when they were sitting back on their cots.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Didn’t you notice? They were wearing sidearms, slug-throwers – guns that shoot bullets. Even security doesn’t carry slug-throwers. No one likes the thought of what a bullet might do on a space station.” He thought a bit more. “And they looked so arrogant. Did you notice that?”

  She nodded. “But that other one, Jensen, he didn’t have a gun.”

  “Jensen?”

  “The name on his uniform.”

  “Ah. He wore sergeant’s stripes. Sergeant Jensen. No, he didn’t, and he was nice.”

  Sandra began going through her belongings. “I don’t want to be anywhere near those men.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting my important things together – just in case.”

  He looked more closely at what she considered important enough to take ‘just in case’. “The package my father gave us?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think–”

  The Public Address came to life. “All non-critical station personnel, please go to your quarters at this time.” It repeated. A hubbub arose in the room, with people questioning each other, but no one getting a satisfactory reply, for no one knew anything.

  “I’m scared, Larry.”

  He didn’t want to admit it, but did anyway. “Me, too.”

  “Let’s get prepared – just in case.”

  “Just in case,” he replied, and began to sort through his carry-on.

  Gerry and Karen, who had set up next to them, came hustling back from their little sightseeing tour. They stopped in.

  “I don’t like this,” Gerry said. “I saw a lot of soldiers, armed soldiers. They made us nervous, and the station people don’t appear too calm, either. It doesn’t seem to be a usual occurrence.”

  Karen glanced at their open cases. “What are you doing?”

  “We met a nice man who showed us the escape pods. He told us we should have all our important goods – things we just can’t do without – in a separate case, something small enough to carry without it slowing us down. Then, if evacuation sounds, we just pick it up and run. We thought we’d do that.” She slipped the envelope, which his father had given her back on the train, into her case. He wondered what was in it, but she probably didn’t know, either, for it remained sealed.

  Gerry looked from one to the other, then at Karen.

  “Good idea,” they said together, then laughed nervously. “We’ll do it, too.”

  The rest of the day passed with anxiety mounting. No one came in and told them anything. Food arrived, but the Amalgamated employees kept their mouths shut with respect to rumours – or facts of the situation, for that matter. They only passed on the word that Amalgamated 487 had not yet appeared, and that the next shuttle from the surface had not yet lifted.

  “It takes less than an hour for a radio signal to come in from Io,” Larry said. “A hyperspace flight from there to here doesn’t take all that much longer – some hours, but certainly not a day.”

  Sandra shrugged. “I don’t know; they don’t seem to think we have a right to information.”

  “This is crazy,” Larry finally said as they finished packing their emergency kits. “I’m going to find something out.”

  “Don’t go out there; they told us to stay in quarters.”

  Larry gave her what he hoped was a confident smile. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t think of it. But they must have a vid link in here, so I’m going to try to get a news feed.”

  He went in search of it behind where the tables had originally been at the front of the room. Behind a curtain, he found the screen and its controls. He turned it on, found a news feed, and finally found the speakers icon, which he turned on.

  “And in other, related news, the President of the United States of North America has warned the European Treaty Organization that we will not tolerate any interference from them in our showdown with the South American Union.”

  People around him congregated in front of the screen, and soon the whole room had focused their attention on the news from Earth.

  “At this time, all shuttle travel between Earth and its satellite stations has ceased. No one wants anyone to mistake a shuttle launch for a strike launch. Tensions are also running high between India and Pakistan, and we have word of skirmishes between the armed forces of those two regional powers. Should China involve herself, a host of alliances might get activated much the same way the First World War alliances contributed to the outbreak of the conflict. Japan and China are poised at the brink, each accusing the other of violating the ‘Islands Agreement’.”

  The room filled with mutterings, but when the news feed suddenly shifted to a drama vid while the news announcer was in mid word, the mutterings broke into angry conversations.

  “Turn it back, Kid,” said one of the settlers with whom he wasn’t familiar.

  “I didn’t change it.”

  But that met with a chorus of ‘turn it back’.

  Disgusted, Larry motioned to the controls. “Here, you find it.”

  He stepped away, and the first man went to the controls, but every channel showed either a drama or a comedy vid. Larry looked to the chrono on the wall. It read 1820hrs – middle of supper hour Eastern Time on Earth below – which the station followed. The time on the newscast had read the same.

  “First news I’ve seen in three months, and they cut it off,” Jeff said.

  Larry hadn’t seen Jeff in the shuttle, hadn’t realized he was one of the eighty who had made it.

  “Has anyone seen any news since they started the course?” Jeff called out. Apparently no one had.

  “We did,” Sandra spoke up. “But only a minute’s worth yesterday. The SAU says that the USNA searched ships heading for them without reason, and illegally. They threatened further sanctions. That’s all we know.”

  “Further sanctions?” a short, thin man asked. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that they already are sanctioning us and intend to increase that, dimwit,” a taller, blond man retorted.

  The two squared off, and space opened up on all sides.

  “Stop this!” Larry shouted, and they halted for a moment, everyone with their attention on him. “Jeff, come here.”

  The big ox shoved his way through the room, grinning, and came to stand beside Larry, not as tall, but much more solid.

  “Anyone wants to fight, they’ll have to take us on, first.” He looked around. “I just graduated from school, top boxer in our state,” he lied. “Jeff, here, will handle anything I don’t think I can.”

  The entire room looked at him, first appraising his physique, which had only become more impressive for the work he’d done in the last couple of weeks, and then looking at the huge man beside him.

  “I wouldn’t try anything,” Gerry said, coming to his side. “This boy just completed the entire program by challenging every course – and did it in two weeks. Then he helped the instructor teach the blacksmithing course, ’cause he’s been doing that sort of work for the last three years. He has muscle on muscle.”

  That caused the crowd to take a mental step backwards.

  Gerry finished them off with a lie of his own. “He finished the haying challenge without even breathing hard.”

  The blond turned around and surveyed the crowd. “Any others come up with that boy?”

  Several said yes, and backed up Gerry’s lie, much to Larry’s amusement. They had hated him and his wife down below, but now they backed him because he was ‘one of ours’.

  “What do we do, then?” the short woman who’d gone to the thin man’s side asked. She was probably his wife.

  Now he took a mental step backwards. He had no intention of becoming a leader here, didn’t want that at all. But he had – inadvertently or not – made a play for the position, and they had given it to him.

  “Nobody goes out – there are armed soldiers on station who don’t think much of farmers. Also, one of the station personnel told us of evacuation alarms. If they sound, we have to go to an evacuation zone with only what’s really important to us – one small case. So, we should all learn the way there, and should pack that case appropriately.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” the blond man said.

  Larry ignored him. “Now, the next time one of the Amalgamated people comes in, we’ll ask to speak with Mr Richardson. When he gets here—.”

  “He is here!” a booming voice came from the back of the room. “You just heard good advice. You should follow it.”

  Brian Richardson bulled his way to the front of the room to stand beside Jeff and Larry. With their three imposing figures, all malcontent died away.

  “I’m here to advise you of the steps we’re taking. No more shuttles are coming up from Spaceport for a while. That’s point one. Point two: the station doesn’t want you here, and neither does Amalgamated. You’re just breathing our air, eating our food and not producing anything.

  “Thus, we’re in discussions with a Family ship to get you off our station and on your way. It may take a day or two. Be patient; stay here – as the young man said, we have soldiers on board who don’t much like people like you getting in the way. Any fights that break out, those fighting will go down to the planet.” He gave a sudden grin. “Except for these two,” he indicated Jeff and Larry, “if we find they were trying to keep the peace.” Then his grin turned hard. “If we find they are exceeding their authority – then they go, too. And, as I said earlier, no one who goes down comes up again.

  “Now, any questions?”

  Larry felt stunned. And now his position had become official. Richardson had just given him charge of 80 colonists.

  “Why did the news get cut off?” asked a stout man, who Larry hadn’t noticed before.

  “Why do you care?” Richardson retorted. “That’s news from Earth. You’re leaving Earth.” That didn’t mollify the man, and Richardson continued. “But I’ll answer the question, nonetheless. We have workers and visitors here from places other than the United States of North America. The last thing we need is planetary disputes – which will probably blow over in a day or three – causing tension and perhaps inciting incidents up here that would necessitate disciplinary measures. So,” he ended, grinning again, “no news is good news.

  “Now, as this young man suggested, go and learn the way to the evacuation zones.” He held up his hand to stop any question. “No, I don’t believe you’ll need to know about them, I just want you busy doing something else besides causing trouble. You can watch a drama vid if you prefer, for all I care. Or sleep. Or play cards.”

 

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