Mayor Stunt grabbed a few packets of tea, opened our hot-water containers, and popped them in. "If you want sweetener, just use these controls," he said, pointing out a set of buttons on the mug marked Sweet, Sweeter, Sweetest, and Desweeten.
None of us bothered to consider what else might be in the tea. You just assume that tea is tea, but that wasn't necessarily true on Europa.
"What brings you to our great colony?" Stunt asked.
"Commercial business."
"What sort of commercial business?"
"Waste hauling," I said hesitantly while inventing a cover story. I didn't want to come out and say I was there to hire thugs.
"We don't have waste," boasted the Mayor. "We recycle everything."
"That's not entirely true. Your reactors produce waste gases. Are you venting them into space?
"Well, I suppose something gets vented. Mainly heat, but. . . ."
"Environmentally unfriendly!" I proclaimed. "That gas could easily disarticulate and recombine into something that might end up sealed forever in Europa's ocean. The damage could be catastrophic! And Mayor, it won't ever stop harming your world," I remarked, making it all up as I went.
"Well, I hadn't thought of that, but. . . ."
"I need to speak to your engineers. An arrangement could be made that won't cost you a gram of gold."
"Won't cost, eh?"
"Not a cent."
"Well, I can arrange for you to speak to someone. But. . . ."
"And there are also the home fusion reactors. Anyone with one of those will need us too. But I can't get started without checking the prices for lithium waste on Earth. I'll need access to a communications array," I said.
"That won't be a problem. There is a paycomm in the main dome. But as I was saying, we're hydrothermal. We don't have any reactors at all."
"None?" My hype deflated. I was proud of my charade up until then.
"Not a one, but don't you worry, Mr., umm, Hunter," he said as he glanced at the Amaranth Sun's registration papers. "As long as you're not here to steal our crop and are not with any of the unions, we won't bother you. But that means too that you don't bother us."
"We have no intention of creating any kind of problems for you."
"The main dome is entirely public," the Mayor explained, "and you're welcome to everything in there. We just ask that you avoid the private habitation modules and the growing domes. After the pirate attack we've had to be more security-conscious. Before I was elected, they used to give tours of our agricultural projects. I'd love to give you one now because we're very proud of them, but I hope you understand that we can't any longer."
"That will be fine. We respect what you do here, but our business is the reason for our visit. We have a schedule, and once we're finished we'll be leaving immediately."
"Fair enough, and welcome again! If you need anything do come to my office and speak to me or my lovely secretary, Sister Mary Joanna." The aforesaid smiled from behind him and waved sheepishly with a high-pitched giggle. I'd never seen a nun in a bikini before.
We bounced past the greeting desk and through a very high doorway. Beyond it was the central dome. It had a main street aptly named Ashbury running the length of the structure. New San Francisco was arranged much like any other city in a standard grid pattern, so we made our way down Ashbury Street admiring the shops. We stopped to peruse a clothing store that sold entirely domestic plant-fiber products. Most of them had the feel of burlap.
I was struck by how the merchants lived above their shops. In a way the place had an anachronistic feel, something like a cross between a modern space station and an old European city, but with obvious differences. On Europa you could bounce more than ten feet in the air, making stairways unnecessary. The nicer buildings had barber poles that you could climb up or down, but some of the simpler ones had openings with stout netting to grab onto and pull yourself into the rooms above.
At the intersection of Haight and Ashbury was a square with a large fountain. An inscription said that the water was piped directly from the ocean below the ice floor. The fountain was at least 60 feet in diameter. It had to be in order to catch all the globules of water falling back down in the slow motion of low gravity. The whole thing was quite beautiful, but then the scene begin to shimmer.
"Cam," Stacey remarked, "I think there was something in that tea."
"I think you're right," I replied.
"I gotta sit down," Neil said.
We plunked ourselves down on the edge of the fountain and didn't move for three hours. My mind is usually churning, but for that period of time I was drawing a blank. It took effort to think about anything, so I found myself perfectly happy to just sit and stare, occasionally giggling at the open-mouthed looks on my companion's faces.
Neil was the first to stand up and say something: "I feel as though my brain is made out of rocks."
"Mine is. . . ." I said, stopping to clear my throat. "Mine is starting to work again." I put my hand on my forehead and rubbed it.
"Strong stuff," commented Stacey.
"We'd better get moving," I replied.
We ventured sluggishly down a side street. They really did have everything, much more than you'd think for such a low-population settlement. A trading post sold most kinds of things, though apparently their biggest seller was rolling papers. There were organic vegetable stands and several street vendors selling fried tarpotch.
The tarpotch is the only complex animal in the solar system that didn't evolve on Earth, though no one knew what lay in the unexplored subterranean oceans of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tarpotch is something like a jellyfish, black and formless with no eyes and an almost gelatinous feel. Breaded and fried it was delicious, particularly if you'd been drinking Europan tea.
At one of the stands we bought some tarpotch and bounced along one of the busier streets until we spotted the paycomm building. Stacey and Neil stayed outside, still a little orbital from the tea, while I spent a few hours inside. I wasn't over it either, but I had work to do and thought I could still write a decent letter to Ed. He told me later that it was so full of misspellings and grammatical errors that he had a linguist look at it to make sure I wasn't writing in code. I collected my companions and started looking for somewhere to spend the night.
The only hotel was called the Jupiter Rising, but it was run more like a bed-and-breakfast. The proprietor was a 60-something robust lady named Reeda, who had a naturally warm personality. I'd recommend that hotel to anyone. It was spotlessly clean, and they didn't bleed your bank account for every little amenity as they do on Earth. The best part was the free breakfast.
Reeda rose at 4:00 a.m. sharp, a schedule she kept regardless of whether there were any guests or not, and set out the greatest breakfast spread you've ever seen. Europa is far from Earth, and traditional items like bacon and eggs are prohibitively expensive. A typical breakfast there consists of fried squash, homemade kelp-bread, and a spicy tarpotch sausage ground by a man who could only be happy on Europa. He popped in halfway through our meal. Everyone called him "Sausage." He ground tarpotch, made moonshine in a still, and grew gigantic watermelons and peppers.
"I've been here for years. I'm the last of the real hillbillies," he said as he handed a package of fresh meat to Reeda. "Tennessee has lost its way. It's too modern. Buildings and corporate parks everywhere; even the country isn't the country anymore. I say to Hades with that. Give me the good old days. Here on Europa I've got my own habitat dome. I call it 100 Miles from Memphis, and I pretend I'm in the old days, listening to radio recordings and watching monochrome movies. I love it here. You can be who you are, do whatever you want, and there's never any pressure."
"Did you have a still in Tennessee?" I asked.
"Heavens no," Sausage said with a broad smile. He seemed to turn into a completely different person. "I was the CEO of a corporation. Three decades of 16-hour days, occasional heart attacks, and not a single vacation the whole time. The last coronary got
me thinking, so I retired. Haven't had an event since. Tarpotch has the highest cholesterol content in the solar system, they say. It's a bunch of hooey. Stress is what gets us."
"Sausage grows the most amazing peppers," Reeda interjected. "They'll burn your mouth out. You'll see. I added them to the country gravy."
It was the hottest gravy I've ever had.
Chapter 14 Day 239
"December 20, 2259. Log of Captain John Andrew Nelson, Commanding Officer, UNAG Mining Vessel Cape Hatteras. We have altered our orbit in order to focus on the stony side of the asteroid. I have dispatched crewmen Marquez and Galon to the surface to collect science data and samples."
The tone of Ed Iron's reply was angry, but it was more of a vent than anything else. He understood that there wasn't much I could have done. But without the gold exhibiting the Cape Hatteras and cashing in the few bricks left on it wouldn't come close to covering the cost of the expedition. He stood to lose a great deal of money if I didn't retrieve most of the gold, and I was already certain that the Smithsonian would sue when I delivered a pancaked hull instead of an intact probe.
Wandering around New San Francisco made me realize that my plan wasn't as clear-cut as I had envisioned. I had expected a population of law-skirting hooligans, but really they were just independent people looking to live apart from Earth and its trappings. If we were going to find the kind of people we needed, our last chance was Europa's only tavern. It was called the Naughty Venus.
Going in there involved stepping through a shifting barrier of smoke. It was so thick you could have cut it with a mining laser. But it wasn't just smoke from Europa's more famous crop. It was also tobacco. The health issues surrounding tobacco had long been solved, but it had never recovered the prominence it once had on Earth. On Europa they smoked it proudly. My throat was burning, so I ordered one of the local beers, taking care to read the ingredients.
I looked around the Naughty Venus. The view wasn't encouraging. A group of 20-somethings hovered around the bar to avoid any interruption in the flow of booze. Some older men sat at one of the tables, their beards and ponytails bobbing in the low gravity as they opined about the recent pirate raid for lack of any weather to complain about. I overheard one say that if they lost another crop the colony would be finished, and the UNAG would have to assume direct rule.
I figured that springing for a round might break the ice.
"Hey, human," said one. "Thanks for the bubbles."
Europans referred to anyone from anywhere else as "humans," as though we were a separate species.
"You're welcome. We're here from Earth on business," I responded.
"Never been there! I'm the first true Europan, born here in 2441," he said.
For someone about age 20 he looked scrawny from the low-gravity upbringing. He probably couldn't have visited Earth without breaking bones.
"Cool," I said, hoping to sound hip by using a 500-year-old colloquialism.
"Heh, yeah, frozen," he said with a chuckle.
I glanced at Neil to take over, and he launched into the slang of the day. It was incomprehensible to anyone over 30. From what I understand, body movements are just as important as the nonsense words.
"Far, Europan, you know the plantation," Neil said, holding his right arm high above his head.
"Yar, human, mang. Tonto and Grandpa do tha' mix," replied the Europan.
I had no idea what they were saying, and neither did Stacey. I assumed that I was "Grandpa."
"Oldie. Melon-good, but mang, Tonto udewatch, sour t'itch," Neil said. The Europan chuckled, and then they fluttered their hands at each other.
"Hey!" Stacey caught on. "What's this "sour" you're talking about?"
"Melon?" I asked.
"What?" said Neil. "I told him you were nice. It's, like, opposite meanings."
They ignored me and continued stringing words and gesticulations together that made them look like drunken dancers. In the end they simply appeared to be whistling at each other and on the brink of kissing when Neil turned to me as the Europan abruptly bounced away.
"Did you offend him?" I asked.
"No. Mission accomplished!" Neil said.
"What do you mean mission accomplished? What the hell just happened?"
"He said he's got the man we need. He'll be back in a few minutes."
Not long afterwards the Europan returned with the Mayor and Sister Mary Joanna in tow. She waved with a giggle.
"Why didn't you tell me you needed someone stomped?" he asked, as though that were a perfectly normal thing to say.
"We don't need anyone stomped, Reverend. We need to get our property back," I said, mindful that he was still a government official of sorts.
"What kind of property? You aren't smuggling plant products are you? We'd have a problem if you are. We can barely survive pirates, much less competitors."
"No, nothing like that. Just salvage from a wrecked cargo ship."
"Ahhhh, salvagers. Little better than pirates, your lot are."
"Not us. We're doing it legally. It's some of the other salvagers who create a problem and give us all a bad name."
The Mayor sighed and looked at me suspiciously. "I suppose we know a lot about acquiring bad names here on Europa. Tell me what happened. No lies, no deflections, just spill it all if you want real help, instead of that. . . ," he said, as he pointed out a window framing crazy Randy, who was bending over and poking at some gooey stain on the street and chuckling at it.
"We wrapped up work on a ship. . . ."
"Which ship?"
"A cargo ship lost 50 years ago called the . . . Cape Canaveral. A salvager by the name of Finley Pace made off with our haul. The skipper of our salvor was in on it." I wasn't lying. I simply made an error in geography.
"I see, I see. And what sort of haul was it?"
"Scrap metal," I said. I was still not lying: gold is a metal and can be called scrap.
"Scrap metal, you say. It wasn't, by chance, gold scrap metal was it?"
"We wish! Just aluminum and advanced alloys," I said. Now I was lying.
He looked at me in silence for a moment, rubbing his beard. "I see. Well, that Finley character passed through here some months ago. He claimed he was looking for the Cape Hatteras. I've heard that one before. I told him the damned thing probably either didn't exist or has drifted halfway to Alpha Centauri by now. I guess he failed and made the best of it by robbing you."
"Must be, but my investor wants the goods back. The advanced alloys were of substantial value to him. He builds habitat domes and is always short on raw materials. I need people and ships to intercept the thieves when they pass through this system. It will be sometime within the next two weeks."
"I can help," said the Mayor. "My ship is in direct orbit of Jupiter watching for pirates. It's fast, and I've armed it to the teeth. It'll be more than a match for a couple of salvors. Of course, that's assuming you're willing to pay well for the service."
I didn't tell him about Finley's ram.
"Would $100,000 UNAG dollars be sufficient?"
"I'd need $200,000. I've got a large crew to pay, and I need a confidentiality agreement in writing. I don't want it broadcast that the Mayor of New San Francisco moonlights as a mercenary."
"Done."
We made our way through town to his office. Sister Mary Joanna wrote up a contract in triplicate, handing it to us with a squeal.
"Meet me in two days at Io. I'll be in a polar orbit at an altitude of 4000 kilometers," the Mayor said, signing the contract.
"Does anyone else here have a fast ship? I'd like to have some backup."
"It’s just me at the moment. Most people don't need them. Our transports are old and slow but very reliable. Especially when Randy pilots them," he said facetiously.
Having only one ship worried me, but the Mayor was confident that his vessel had the speed and overwhelming force needed to defeat Finley. We were left with extra time to see the rest of the city. Neil and Stacey ha
d heard about a low-G swimming pool across town and wanted to try it.
The Mayor offered to have someone show me the agriculture domes, an offer I readily accepted since I didn't want to admit to Neil and Stacey that their salty old captain couldn't swim. I was met at the fountain an hour later by a young man named Bobby. He looked like something from 20th-century Earth, complete with dreadlocks and beads. He ushered me into the tiered gardens rising hundreds of feet in the air and nurtured by an artificial sun. Vegetables and the cash crop were intermingled. The strong scent of the plants overwhelmed my nostrils, which were too accustomed to the sterile smell of technology and freeze-dried rations.
Europa might have had a reputation for skirting the law, but seeing it in person made it seem like a paradise.
Chapter 15 Cloak and Dagger
"December 21, 2259. 0700 hours. Log of Captain John Andrew Nelson, Commanding Officer, UNAG Mining Vessel Cape Hatteras. Marquez and Galon have reached the surface. They report an alien landscape of porous spires of rock reaching a hundred feet skyward. A chain of small mountains lies a short distance away. I have instructed the men to explore them."
Later that afternoon I went to find Stacey and Neil. The swimming was apparently more than they could stomach, and the water was so salty that their clothes had dried stiff. They were desperate for a mist shower, so we cut our exploration short and made our way back to the hotel. A half-hearted hello to Reeda was all any of us could muster.
I collapsed in slow motion onto the bed. I had been walking most of the day, or rather bouncing, and the prospect of a nap was sublime. No sooner had I hit the pillow than I heard a knock and the sound of paper sliding beneath the door. I had a look outside, but no one was there. I retrieved the note.
"Beware the captain of the Neptune's Revenge," it said in a sexy female voice.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked the digipaper.
"Beware the captain of the Neptune's Revenge," it repeated, before flashing a grainy human memory-based picture of the Mayor.
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