by Samuel Best
Once they arrived, they quickly realized there was no way to earn enough money to buy a ticket home. They became ghosts, haunting the station, surviving off garbage-can scraps left behind by passengers who could afford a meal. Occasionally, a few of the more disruptive unintended inhabitants were shipped back down to Earth, but the space station administrators rarely bothered.
Tulliver wondered where they were all hiding.
He turned his attention back to the lone businessman, who had finished his meal and stood from his chair.
Tulliver stood as well, smoothing down the sides of his jacket as the businessman headed for the bathrooms. After he turned a corner, out of sight, Tulliver walked quickly in that direction, his jowly cheeks bouncing with each hard step.
Sterile fluorescent lights beamed down from above as he entered the bathroom. Everything was surfaced with tile, and every surface reflected the harsh lighting, causing Tulliver to squint.
He stood at one of the two sinks and washed his hands, glancing in the mirror at the shiny shoes of the businessman behind a stall door. A moment later, the businessman emerged and washed his hands in the other sink.
The corner of a passenger ticket with glowing red lettering peeked out from his jacket pocket. Tulliver shook water off his hands over the sink as he looked back at the entrance to make sure no one else had entered, and he turned to face the businessman.
“Hey there, friend,” he said with a smile. “Traveling to Galena?”
CHAPTER THREE
MERRITT
Each bite of food was poison to his small body, yet Gavin dutifully chewed another forkful of soy eggs.
Merritt was convinced the boy’s skin grew paler with each bite, yet he had to eat. Reluctantly, he offered another cold triangle of the rubbery egg. Gavin ate it, closing his eyes in disgust as he chewed.
Sorry, Merritt signed when Gavin opened his eyes.
The egg was all he could afford after the fleecing he’d received getting to the station. Between the exorbitant cost of the ticket itself and the inflated bribe to get through security, Merritt was left with an empty hellocard, and no way to buy shelter once he got to Galena.
Gavin choked down the last bite of egg. Merritt ignored his own rumbling stomach, telling himself there would be something to eat aboard the ship.
He and his son left the food station behind and followed signs for the departure gates. Some small amount of relief was to be gained from the fact he could allow Gavin to walk around without fear of Snatchers. Stealing a child on a space station had to be far more complicated than doing so on the streets of one of Earth’s major cities.
Gavin appreciated it, as well. He walked close to his father, looking around at the station with wide, absorbing eyes.
The food station and promenade had been nearly devoid of other people, but more appeared as they approached the departure gates. They didn’t strike Merritt as itinerant passengers, but rather as permanent inhabitants of the station.
Makeshift shelters had been tucked into dark corners of the shop-lined walls: flimsy plasterboard roofs with thin blankets draped from their corners, creating a modicum of privacy.
In the distance ahead, the departure gates became visible at the top of the rise in the centrifuge floor. A few filthy station inhabitants dressed in rags sat against both walls, knees tucked to their chins or sprawled on the floor indifferently, as Merritt and several other passengers walked past.
Some held out dirty hands and dim hellocards, pleading for food scraps and bank transfers.
The sparse pockets of beggars became a throng. Merritt picked up his son as they waded through the mass of grabbing hands and prostrate individuals mumbling pleas. It seemed that, with the imminent arrival of a starliner, everyone on the station had congregated around the departure gates with the hope of gleaning a handout.
The crowd thinned abruptly at the gates, which were guarded by two men in thick riot armor. They wielded thick batons and heavy rifles. Those coupled with their grim frowns was enough to ward off even the boldest of beggars.
Merritt held up his tickets and the guards nodded him through. He set Gavin down once they cleared the gate and walked toward the boarding platform. The starliner wouldn’t arrive for another couple of hours, but he preferred to spend that time in the station’s smaller waiting area.
The din of the crowd lessened to a background susurration as Merritt left the departure gates behind and walked toward a security booth. He presented his blue tickets to a thin man standing behind a window of bullet-proof plexi. The man wore a faded maroon uniform and white gloves. A pointed goatee further narrowed his thin face.
The man stared at Merritt as he took the tickets and rubbed the first one over a scanner. A soft green light blinked on from the scanner, illuminating his face from below. He rubbed the second ticket over the scanner, and a red light filled the booth.
“Theese teeckit, okay for Galena,” the man said in a heavy accent, holding up the first piece of plastic. He then held up the second ticket — the one Merritt had purchased from the man in the alley on Earth. “Theese teeckit, only good for half-deestints. They drop you, shweesh, in space.” He made a swooping gesture with one white-gloved hand.
Merritt clenched his jaw, realizing the man on Earth sold him a ticket with only enough distance credit to get him to the Rip, and not beyond.
The thin man in the booth shrugged. “I see it every day, theese same teeckit. Is a big problem, yes yes.”
“How much for the full distance?” Merritt asked, his voice thick with anger.
“One-feefty K. But is no return teeckit. Just one way.”
He set the tickets down, and Merritt slowly slid them off the metal counter and put them into his jacket pocket.
In a daze, he walked back through the crowd of beggars outside the departure gate entrance. He found a quieter section a short distance away and sat on a bench against the opposite wall. Gavin climbed up onto the bench and sat next to him, watching the throng near the gates. Seen from the outside, it appeared as a single organism, swelling, calming, shifting to one side and back again. The dark, shabby clothes blended together, as did the dirty skin and unwashed hair.
Where is the ship? Gavin signed.
“It will be here soon,” said Merritt. “It stopped at another space station on the other side of Earth.”
The night side?
“That’s right. But it will be day there soon.”
Because the Earth spins, Gavin signed, smiling.
Merritt ruffled his son’s hair.
The crowd moved closer to the departure gates as a large group of passengers approached, revealing a second gate against the far wall. No guards stood before this gate. There was a conveyor belt in the wall for luggage, and a subtle walk-through security scanner that led to a simple door.
A man wearing a starliner foreman’s uniform — identical to a workman’s blue coveralls except for the addition of three black bands around his left bicep — stood at a desk next to the security scanner. He was short and swarthy, with hardly a neck, and a face lined like a stack of pancakes, out of which he forever squinted at the world. He chewed a wet, unlit cigar.
As Merritt watched, the door was kicked open from the other side. The foreman turned as two armed men dragged a third man wearing a workman’s blue hat and uniform, kicking and screaming. They dropped him unceremoniously to the floor.
The armed men exchanged a few words with the foreman, then went back through the door. Springing to his feet, the workman jabbed a finger at the foreman, who was a head shorter. The workman’s face reddened as he hurled vehement curses at the foreman, his family, and anyone who had the misfortune to meet him. The foreman looked up at the other man, regarding him with the countenance of stone, his cigar slowly trailing from one corner of his mouth to the other.
The workman threw his own hat on the floor and kicked it away, then stomped off, leaving the foreman shaking his head in his wake.
Merritt left
the bench and approached this smaller, secondary gate. Gavin stayed close by his side, gripping the fabric of his father’s baggy pants with a small, tight fist.
The foreman ignored him as he approached, ostensibly absorbed in the touchscreen built into his desk surface. The screen painted his face a sickly yellow.
“Employees only,” he croaked in a low voice without looking up from his screen. “Can’t you read?”
Merritt looked above the door behind the foreman. A small plaque with faded, near-unintelligible lettering above it read Flight Crew Entrance.
“I’ll take that man’s place,” said Merritt, gesturing in the direction of the irate workman’s exit route. “Trade my salary for passage to Galena.”
The foreman turned off his screen and slowly looked up. He thoughtfully chewed the end of his cigar as he scrutinized Merritt’s face.
“My ticket has enough credit for half-distance,” Merritt continued. “I would work off the rest.”
“Waiting list for his job is forty years long,” said the foreman.
“I’ll work harder than any of them. Besides, how many of his replacements are on the station right now?”
The foreman grunted. “Last job?”
“I was in the Labor Union operating and repairing cargo lifters for the Port Authority.”
“You were laid off?”
“Two months ago when they busted the union.”
“I heard the stories. What other skills you have?”
“I’m a journeyman.”
“So’s he,” replied the foreman, jabbing a thumb at a passing janitor. He took the cigar out of his mouth and squinted harder at Merritt, his eyes nearly lost beneath a drooping brow. “You can weld?”
“Yes.”
“You can patch a hull?”
“Yes.”
“You can repair GravGens?”
Merritt hesitated a moment too long, then said, “Yes.”
The foreman noticed the pause, but the hint of a smile passed his lips.
“I wouldn’t bother replacing him so close to launch,” he said, making a rude direction toward the absent workman, “but I already fired nine others.” He held up seven fingers and wiggled two knuckle-stumps. The ring and pinky fingers on his left hand were missing. “You work in the ship’s belly most of the time. No gravity down there.”
“No problem.”
The foreman grunted doubtfully. “That means no hypergel sleep for you, either, in case you thinking ‘bout sneaking into a tank with your employee badge. You stay awake with the other workers. If you work in the belly, you exercise all the time, or your bones snap like twigs.”
“That’s no problem.”
The foreman leaned to the side and looked down at Gavin. “And who’s this? A stowaway?”
Gavin burrowed his face into Merritt’s leg.
“My son. He has a full ticket.”
The foreman smiled at the boy, his face temporarily graced by an unexpected warmth. “Hard life for a boy, here,” he said. “And down there.” He pointed at the floor, through the station, at Earth. “Will be hard on Galena, too.”
“Only at first,” said Merritt.
The foreman snatched the two tickets and set them flat against his desk screen. He swiped a screen to the side and tapped on the screen, then handed the tickets back to Merritt.
“Talk to Stoney on board. He set you up. I will go, too, calling the shots.” He slapped his belly importantly. “And if you change your mind about Galena, my brother works on Mars. You tell him Willef sent you, he get you fast work.”
Merritt looked at the tickets, his response sticking in his throat. Gavin pinched his leg.
“Thank you, Willef,” said Merritt at last.
The foreman stuck the wet, unlit cigar back in his mouth and nodded as well as a man with hardly any neck could. “See you on board.”
Merritt put his hand behind Gavin’s back and guided the boy through the security door before the foreman could change his mind, leaving the chaotic departure gate behind and entering a modest waiting room with rows of chairs facing a small viewing window. A few starliner employees slouched in their chairs or tried to doze while awaiting the ship’s arrival.
Merritt sat at the end of the front row, closest to the window. Gavin climbed up in the seat next to him. He was short enough that his knees didn’t reach the end of the chair. He tapped the toes of his threadbare sneakers together as he looked out at the stars.
“Do you see it?” asked Merritt.
Gavin shook his head. Merritt pointed at the center of the window.
“Just there. It’s small, like this.”
He held his thumb and forefinger close together, almost touching.
The ship approached slowly, heading right for the space station. At such a distance, coming at the station head-on, it appeared as a sand-colored rectangle with rounded corners. A smaller, black rectangle — the cockpit window — nested within the larger.
Gavin hopped down from his seat and ran to the window. He pressed his palms and nose against it, his breath fogging the glass.
It’s going to work, thought Merritt as he watched his son. We’ll make it to Galena, I’ll get my farm. We’ll start over.
Unbidden, the image of his wife on her deathbed flashed in his mind. He shut his eyes against it, but it didn’t fade.
Pale as the white sheets that covered her cancer-ravaged body, she held out her hellocard and the brochure for Galena — the brochure she stared at longingly during the quiet moments of her day, starting before she met Merritt.
It would not be the first time she offered, and it would not be the last.
Merritt took the brochure and the hellocard and set them aside, lying, as he always did when Emily insisted so earnestly, that they would both take Gavin someday. Yet, as he knew, and as she had no doubt forgotten, their two hellocards combined had perhaps enough for a trip no farther than the lunar colony, and that didn’t include a visit to the surface. They could splurge for an overnight sight-seeing cruise instead, yet doing so would render them utterly destitute.
Later, Emily told him a secret.
She pulled him close and whispered in his ear that her hellocard would soon be, suddenly and inexplicably, brimming with credits.
He pulled away with a tight, practiced smile, not in the mood to entertain another one of her frequent delusions.
It would be several weeks before he realized she’d been telling the truth.
As he awaited the arrival of the ship that would carry him and his son to Galena, he rubbed his thumb over the hard plastic screen of her hellocard. Besides the brochure and a small leather pouch he wore on a thong around his neck, it was his last physical reminder of her. All of their possessions had been sold off soon after her diagnosis to pay the mounting medical costs.
Emily had never said where she got the money to buy tickets to Galena.
Merritt spent many sleepless nights trying to figure it out, but — as Emily often teased — she was smarter than him. If she didn’t want him knowing where it came from, he would never know.
Gavin turned away from the window to grin up at Merritt as the starliner performed a banking maneuver, turning at an angle to the space station and showcasing its entire profile.
Merritt rose from his seat without thinking, suddenly lost in the spectacle of the ship’s very existence.
The centrifuge of Sunrise Station boasted a three-hundred meter diameter. Its docking arms extended from the core an additional two-hundred meters. The starliner was easily twice again as long as the total distance between the tips of two opposing docking arms, and at least as wide as the centrifuge.
That’s a big ship, Gavin signed excitedly.
Sunlight hit the plated hull of the starliner as it continued its wide, slow turn, glinting off forty-meter letters etched into its hull: Halcyon.
Merritt stood next to Gavin at the window, resting a hand on the back of his head.
“That’s our ship, son. It’
s going to take us home.”
LEERA
Leera floated down the departure hallway, heading for the gate at the tip of the docking arm. Two starliner employees, vaguely reminiscent of airline stewards, sat strapped into chairs bolted against the wall. They greeted Leera at the open gate with tired eyes and fake smiles. One of them scanned her ticket with a hand-held reader and directed her onward.
She drifted into an open airlock, the massive hatch hinged open to one side, taking up half the spherical room. Warning labels plastered the walls. As Leera floated past the open airlock door, she read: ATTENTION! In case of sudden loss of atmospheric integrity, safety doors close automatically. DO NOT LINGER!
Up ahead, the entrance foyer was divided into two paths, identified by two signs: Red Tickets and Blue Tickets. She followed the path for passengers holding red tickets, using the silver hand-holds attached to the walls at frequent intervals to propel herself forward.
The other members of her team were already on board. She had remained behind until the last possible moment, citing a desire to explore more of the station.
In truth, she spent those remaining minutes staring down at Earth, perfect as could be when viewed from the indifferent void surrounding it. Out there, in the black, one couldn’t see the dirty streets of London, where she’d been born, nor the seemingly ever-burning landscape of Birmingham, where she’d been raised before the fires started.
Gray cloud cover hid most of Earth’s scars, allowing the imagination to paint the planet with a forgiving brush.
She turned away when the United States rotated into view. The clouds had momentarily parted to reveal a portion of central California, wherein lay Pasadena, where she’d worked — and lived with Paul and raised Micah — for the past nine years.
The entrance hallway of the starliner Halcyon led to a small refreshment room, where stewards standing upright on the floor offered warm face towels, lemon-scented handwipes, packaged biscuits, and sachets of red wine, which, as the stewards continually pointed out, was produced by the last remaining vineyard on Earth.