Retread Shop 1: First Contact

by T. Jackson King

  “Is it true the Ziks pay in gold for indentured service?” asked a guy whose jumpsuit showed the Foods flower emblem. And a national flag patch that ID’d as being Venezuelan.

  “What are you going to do about the Sliss poaching fish off Kerala?” asked a dark-skinned man who wore India’s national flag patch and the neuron emblem of Library. Could he be a Tamil?

  “Is it true the Strelka eat brains?” A New Yorker of course.

  “Shut up! It’s my turn to ask—”

  Colleen, he saw, was looking at him with genuine sympathy in her eyes as he became the target of the unleashed curiosity, complaints and frustrations of humans who knew only a part of the total picture. At least they weren’t going to have to hunt all over the Moon for problems. It looked like they were coming straight to him. In spades.

  “Well, no, the Strelka do not eat brains,” Jack said with a grin, but holding up his hand to forestall a rush of more questions. “As for the Sliss poaching fish off the coast of Kerala, may I suggest you speak to the Russian ambassador here? As for the rights of Third World countries, they are equal to those of any other Earth nation. No more and no less.” The Zambian frowned, clearly not happy. “As for the Zik, yes, they do pay in gold coins for anyone who enters indentured spacework service with them. They need engineers, zero-gee experienced workers and laser welders for the building of the Zikhope asteroid starship.”

  Amanda raised a hand. “Jack, will the Compact share with us the records of stellar observations they made during their travels?”

  That was an easy one. “They will. Speak to the local Horem rep. He’ll set up a tachyon Link to the Library archive on Hekar for you.”

  Amanda smiled at the news. Alexei leaned forward as the bar crowd muttered among themselves. “Liaison Jack, will the Compact share with us the secrets of their interstellar stardrive? Somehow they use antimatter to increase their fusion pulse thrust so they can reach ninety percent of lightspeed.”

  That question was something he’d asked Sargon about not long after his first interview. “No, the Compact will not give away the secret to their interstellar stardrive. But they might Trade for it. I suspect the price would be very very high. Like the national GDP of several Big Eight nations two or three times over.”

  The Russian sighed. “Makes sense. They spent years developing the stardrive. It has value to them and to us.”

  “But that’s not fair!” cried a woman wearing the EU patch and showing the atom emblem of Tech. “They should—”

  Jack sat back and listened to the woman’s irrational, emotional justification for why an alien species should give up their national treasure just to be politically correct. Under the table, Colleen held his hand, a partner in suffering.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Bethrin, walking arm-in-arm with aged Lorilen toward the Research Department’s central Library complex in a rear habitat cave of Hekar, wondered about the differences among the Human women she’d met since the Human Compound had been established. They were women of many nation-Clans, many cultures. All had a technical or professional background, but many seemed to treat the concept of their being equally as important as the Human males of their culture as a strange concept. Or one best not mentioned, lest it disturb some males. She and Lorilen had detected this strange two-mindedness among the females of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, Egypt, Mexico and Africa. For them, they had a station in life that was other than that of the males. Even when their technical prowess surpassed that of the males. Even when they knew, like her and Lorilen, that males and females each had their own special abilities, not exactly equal, but definitely just as important. Like Lorilen’s ability to visually examine a holo matrix of interwoven data patterns and pluck from it that single potential future pattern that would yield a new concept. A new device. A new biological with promise in interspecies pharmacology. Much of that ability had been passed on to Bethrin’s daughter Persa. She sighed.

  Lorilen stopped, pausing to examine some bright yellow Earth flowers lining the flagstone pathway leading to the Library complex. She glanced aside at Bethrin.

  “What’s bothering you, my dear?”

  Bethrin stilled her tell-tale headcrest, trying to exhibit only the emotion of regretful-learned-amusement. Rather than the one of disturbed-concerned-agitation. Lorilen laughed at her failure, squatting to smell the flowers.

  “Lorilen! Must you be so . . . so perceptive!”

  “I try.” Yellow eyes closed as the younger sister of Salex enjoyed the flower aroma. “All life is a wonderful scent that begs to be perceived.”

  “So you’ve taught me.” Bethrin paused, appreciating the presence of Sargon’s aunt, a woman of the same First Generation as bed-ridden Peilan, someone like her own parents, now long dead. Someone who had made her welcome in the Conclave of Clan Arax many, many years ago. Someone who had joyed in the birth of first Persa, then Corin. Someone who had showed her the delicate balancing act that a parent must perfect—demanding the perfection that was expected of all Horem, yet giving the love and sharing that only a parent could give to a child. She squatted down beside Lorilen.

  “I was thinking of the Human women. About how some are so different from us. And others are so like us.” Lorilen looked up, her headcrest curious. “Like Colleen, Jack’s Life-Mate. She is every bit a Horem—in mood and mind, at least.”

  Lorilen’s headcrest flickered in agreement. “She is. And attractive, or so our men say. But you know the Humans have even more Clans than we do. They are so split up. Their cultural patterns are very . . . diversified and contradictory.” Lorilen’s dark-furred brow wrinkled a bit. “They make a delightful logic puzzle.”

  Bethrin laughed. “You sound like Sparkle! Life’s Mate. She says the same.”

  Lorilen stood up, followed by Bethrin. “I know. We’ve been talking. Not too long ago we—Sparkling-Yellow-Thoughts, myself, and Maran’s wife—we talked with Maker-of-Eggs Looseen. It seems the Zik are equally puzzled.”

  She followed Lorilen’s slow pace toward the Library Complex, ignoring the forms of other Compact sapients as they hurried in or out of the Complex, busy with their own Research projects. She remembered a long discussion with Colleen, days after the welcoming party.

  “Lorilen—why do some Humans fear us so?”

  Lorilen stopped abruptly, her toga-covered back stiffening slightly. Not looking back as Bethrin caught up, she answered.

  “Why did the Arrik fear us? The unknown, my dear. The unknown scares many.”

  She came abreast of Lorilen’s. The woman’s fur was strongly black-tipped. “What scares you?”

  Lorilen bent her head, thoughtful, seeming to inspect the yellow paving stones. “Not death. That I understand. I think it is the chance that those I love could be harmed. That scares me.”

  “Me too.” Bethrin remembered her evening talk with Sargon. “But Sargon is doing well with the Contact. He will protect us. Anyway—Hekar is far, far from Earth.”

  “Yes,” Lorilen said. “But not from Humans.”

  Bethrin felt startled. The way of Trade was to accept new clients, to make them welcome, to open one’s home to them. She expected similar courtesy when she visited her Human women friends—and men friends—in their own Compound. Was there any other option to either having Humans among the Horem, or completely excluding them from Hekar?

  Bethrin knew of none.

  She could only hope the delicate balance of Contact would hold.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Get your goddamn buggy out of my blast scatter zone before this charge goes off!” Jack heard over one of the com frequencies used by the rambunctious asteroid prospectors he and Colleen were seeking. It looked like trouble had found them again.

  “Roger, I hear your warning, but what’s the vector shear off? Which way do I go?” he hurriedly asked back over the open comwave.

  “South of the ecliptic, you damn tourist!” came a gruff voice with a Dutch accent. “This here is the Sundance buggy and o
ur claim’s been posted for the last two hours. Get out of the way of our test blast or you’ll be breathing vacuum!”

  He quickly set up a four-second burn on the little rockbuggy, hoping the NTH jets would fire in time. Jack looked across at Colleen, partly hidden like him in an orange and yellow pressure suit. The rockbuggies, unpressurized constructions of a tubular framework, navcomputer, propellant and cargo net for assay samples, could move very quickly. But in the Asteroid Belt, 300 kilometers out from the UN Space Authority’s dome on 1 Ceres, you had to be sure there was nothing in your way before you made a burn. Colleen looked back at him, her green eyes barely visible behind the sunshield of her helmet. Her gloved right hand gave him a thumbs up indicating the high-range resolution radar showed all clear for the planned trajectory change. “We’re clear, Jack,” she added over the suitcom. He pushed the autofire button.

  “We’re the Tennessean. Firing,” he announced to the open comwave. There was no return answer.

  Just as the burn entered the third second, a bright yellow-green flash caught his left eye as they dived head first below the ecliptic. It came from above, fortunately. Jack looked to Colleen for the radar plot report.

  “We’re safe! But just barely,” she said. “The plot shows blast fragments spreading out in a cone pattern about three kilometers from here. But if we’d stayed, we might have been hit.” She turned ominously silent.

  “But we weren’t. Thanks, partner.”

  Their close call drove home to him the bare-boned facts of existence in the Belt, now 20 months after Contact. The 1 Ceres mining colony, they’d found, was an amazing entrepot for small, three-person prospecting ships as pioneering types hunted through the asteroidal debris for silicate-rich type M asteroids. The bounty for finding lithium silicate asteroids, he’d heard, was such that two finds made you a billionaire and system-famous—if you survived the rigors of prospecting. Also worth finding were deuterium-rich ice rocks, a rare earths fragment or a titanium-rich core fragment. Jack had found it amazing how venture capitalism had taken off in the asteroids. They’d found out that the only bureaucratic rules dealt with safety regulations, a central claim registration depot on 1 Ceres, and beacon-lit supply dumps. It was straight laissez-faire economics in the Belt!

  Figuring he’d allowed Sundance enough time for spectroscopic assay of the thermal products from the blast, Jack decided to say hi. Moving his gloved fingers slowly in the still-new experience of weightlessness, he punched the on-switch of the high-megahertz radio.

  “Hellooo Sundance! Any juice from that rockball?”

  “No, you bugging tourist! Just another carbo. Who the hell are you?” asked the Dutch accent. Well, at least they were being semi-civil.

  “Jack Harrigan, Liaison to the Compact aliens and my partner, Colleen McIntyre, a vid producer. We’re riding the Tennessean. Got time for a visit?”

  “You got a woman out there?” asked an American English voice with a Texas twang. “Hell, if’n I’d known, we woulda given ya ‘nother second before the blast. Here’s our transponder. Got it?”

  Jack and Colleen both looked at the centrally mounted navscreen at the same time, bumping helmets. At least it gave him the opportunity for a private chat by way of sound conduction.

  “Colleen, you up for this? Those rockrats sound a bit desperate for company?”

  “Sure Jack, I don’t mind so long as they just look. Anyway, one of them may remember me in his will,” she teased with a clearly visible grin.

  “Sundance,” he called out on the comwave, “we have your signal. You’re about fifteen klicks north and retrograde to us. We’ll rendezvous with you if that’s alright.”

  “Meester Harrrigan,” came a third voice with a heavy Spanish accent, “we don’t use our fuel for visits—just for moneyrock. So you must come to us.”

  Jack didn’t bother with an acknowledgment. The Sundance would soon enough pick them up heading toward the other rockbuggy, especially since he and Colleen hadn’t turned off their transponder since leaving the Compact base on 1 Ceres. While Jack understood the intense desire for secrecy of the freelance and indentured prospectors, he thought running silent in the Asteroid Belt with only passive systems operating was simply not worth the risk. While there were vast spaces between the larger asteroids, there were also plenty of fist-sized rocks that could cause you trouble. And if his rough-and-tumble experiences in flying a rockbuggy—with only a few hours of auto-trainer experience—were any guide, it took talent just to line up the burns correctly.

  “Jack, we’re coming up on another buggy. And look—there’s a pressure dome on the other side of that rock!” She looked at him with the desperation known only to people who had spent 36 hours in vacsuits without a bath. “Do you think they’ve got the supplies for a sponge bath?”

  “Maybe, Colleen. But you know they’d at least want to look, for god’s sake! We didn’t come out here to run a skin-show,” he reproved her.

  She gave him a quizzical look as if to say “Why not?” but then nodded her head reluctantly.

  “Okay, but at least let’s get out of these vacsuits. We can be civilized and eat a meal with them in the dome. Right, Jack?”

  “Fine with me.” He turned to setting up the decel burn that would place them only a few hundred meters away from what was looking to be a unique contraption. Jack saw that Sundance not only didn’t have a 1 Ceres factory mark on it, it appeared to be made up of several other buggies. A sure sign of a rebuilt job from the wreck scraps of other, less fortunate buggies. And prospectors. Their buggy surged toward the six-kilometer wide asteroid, one of its sides only dully reflecting the far off light of Sol.

  “My, my, that sure is a pretty fancy buggy you got there. Your alien friends giving any away?” asked the Dutch accent over the comwave.

  “Nope. But the Tennessean thanks you,” Jack said, feeling surprised anyone thought their assemblage of tubes, seats, oxy tanks, fuel tanks, transponder, navscreen, navcomputer, cargo hold and assay net could be pretty. “However, we are taking complaints. And compliments. And anything else you have on your mind. I work as the Liaison between you rockrats and the bug folks. Want to talk and eat some fresh stores at your dome?” He thought the mention of fresh food—light years better than microwaved freezepaks—would tempt these touchy, highly independent prospectors. Thanks to a suggestion of Colleen’s, their own cargo was just that—fresh food—rather than the explosives, autodrills and extra fuel such buggies usually carried. The ploy had worked two times earlier on other scouting trips.

  “You got fresh feed, Mister?” asked the Texan on board the Sundance, now station-keeping off their port side as they both hovered above the silvery pressure dome.

  “We sure do, cowboy!” Colleen piped up, “and we need a place to spread it out. Want to take a break?”

  “Yep!”—”Damn right!”—”Si, senorita” came simultaneously over the comwave. These rockrats, he thought, must have been out an awful long time to be so woman-starved. While some might think him stupid to take his lover into a situation where he was outnumbered three to one, he hadn’t achieved his current old age by neglecting basic precautions. Jack absently patted the old .45 stuck in the right pants-leg pocket of his vacsuit. That pistol and sharp ninja stars could handle all kinds of trouble.

  “Sounds good,” Jack said to the three men on the hybrid buggy. “We’ll shoot a line down to near your dome and wait for you to open the front door. See you in a few minutes.” But before he could reach behind the metal tube seat, Colleen had already hauled out the piton-gun and lanyard reel, set it up, corrected for their slight drift, and stood ready to shoot. He hauled himself out of the roofless buggy, glanced at her preparations and nodded. The whoosh of the gun was soundless, but the hydrogen peroxide charge did generate beautiful little diamond-crystals of moisture in the vacuum. He crawled hand-over-hand back to the cargo section to grab several netbags of food. On reflection, he left the wine and hard booze bag behind—no point in tempting fate.r />
  “Coming, Jack?” called an anxious pixie in a yellow and orange vacsuit as she snapped her suit lanyard to the steel cable.

  He wondered where Colleen got all her energy, then told himself to stop complaining since a lot of it went into their mutual bedroom fun. Some men, he knew, would give everything they had to be favored with the company of such a lively, intelligent and outrageously pretty woman. Which was why Jack always went prepared for trouble.

  “Yes, Colleen, go ahead. I’ll follow.”

  The trip down—or up—or sideways depending on how one wanted to view nearby space, took just a few minutes. Then they were cautiously pulling themselves over to a five meter-wide pressure dome, an emergency line trailing back to the piton while their hands grabbed protruding rocks. He wondered if this was really just an unremarkable carbonaceous chrondrite asteroid as reported, or if the carbon-black outer skin hide silicates. Probably not, or Sundance would long ago have broadcast a system-wide claim. And then sat back as everyone rushed in to help—for a slight percentage, of course.

  “Howdy. I’m Big Foot Thompson from Ft. Worth. You the Liaison?” asked an orange and blue suited figure floating by the apex hatch of the dome. The slight Texas twang was there.

  “That’s right,” Jack quickly replied. Colleen lightly tapped his oxy backpak, urging him to move on. “I’m Jack Harrigan. From Tennessee. Pleased to meet you. Where are the rest of your friends?”

  “Coming, just as soon as they finish systems shutdown. We were due a break after twenty hours of rock-tapping. Come on in,” offered the medium-sized man, turning to punch in the entry code on the hatch. The metal dish swung outward to reveal a narrow, cylindrical tube. The airlock. And it was a one-person-at-a-time kind. Being cantankerous—and suspicious—Jack pushed ahead of Big Foot to preempt the first cycling. He preferred to be waiting for visitors, rather than be the one arriving head down, upside down in a dimly lit structure whose owners had to be a little bit crazy to be out here in the first place. Big Foot didn’t even comment on his pushiness. Perhaps grabbing while the grab was possible was normal out here.