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twice as far out as
Earth. It measures maybe seventy kilometers by fifty kilometers, and from far
enough away it looks
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ce.txt like an old mud brick somebody used for a shotgun target. It has a
screwy rotation pattern that's hard to match with, and since I couldn't use
the main engines, setting down was a tricky job.
Janet wasn't finished. "Roland Kephart, I've told you about those songs."
"Yeah, sure, hon." There are two inertial platforms in Slingshot, and they
were giving me different readings. We were closing faster than I liked.
"It's bad enough that you teach them to the boys. Now the girls are-"
I motioned toward the open intercom switch, and Janet blushed. We fight a lot,
but that's our private business.
The attitude jets popped. ''Hear this," I said. "I think we're coming in too
fast. Brace yourselves." The jets popped again, short bursts that stirred up
dust storms on the rocky surface below. "But I don't think-" the ship jolted
into place with a loud clang. We hit hard enough to shake things, but none of
the red lights came on "-well break anything. Welcome to Jefferson.
We're down."
Janet came over and cut off the intercom switch, and we hugged each other for
a second. "Made it again," she said, and I grinned.
There wasn't much doubt on the last few trips, but when we first put Slingshot
together out of the wreckage of two salvaged ships, every time we boosted out
there'd been a good chance we'd never set down again. There's a lot that can
go wrong in the Belt, and not many ships to rescue you.
I pulled her over to me and kissed her. "Sixteen years," I said. "You don't
look a day older."
She didn't, either. She still had dark red hair, same color as when I met her
at Elysium Mons
Station on Mars, and if she got it out of a bottle she never told me, not that
I'd want to know.
She was wearing the same thing I was, a skintight body stocking that looked as
if it had been sprayed on. The purpose was strictly functional, to keep you
alive if Slinger sprung a leak, but on her it produced some interesting
curves. I let my hands wander to a couple of the more fascinating conic
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sections, and she snuggled against me.
She put her head close to my ear and whispered breathlessly, "Comm panel's
lit."
"Bat puckey." There was a winking orange light, showing an outside call on our
hailing frequency.
Janet handed me the mike with a wicked grin. "Lock up your wives and hide your
daughters, the tinker's come to town," I told it.
"Slingshot, this is Freedom Station. Welcome back, Cap'n Rollo."
"Jed?" I asked.
"Who the hell'd you think it was?"
"Anybody. Thought maybe you'd fried yourself in the solar furnace. How are
things?" Jed's an old friend. Like a lot of asteroid Port Captains, he's a
publican. The owner of the bar nearest the landing area generally gets the
job, since there's not enough traffic to make Port Captains a full-
time deal. Jed used to be a miner in Pallas, and we'd worked together before I
got out of the mining business.
We chatted about our families, but Jed didn't seem as interested as he usually
is. I figured business wasn't too good. Unlike most asteroid colonies,
Jefferson's independent. There's no big corporation to pay taxes to, but on
the other hand there's no big organization to bail the
Jeffersonians out if they get in too deep.
"Got a passenger this trip," I said.
"Yeah? Rockrat?" Jed asked.
"Nope. Just passing through. Oswald Dalquist. Insurance adjuster. He's got
some kind of policy settlement to make here, then he's with us to Marsport."
There was a long pause, and I wondered what Jed was thinking about. "I'll be
aboard in a little,"
he said. "Freedom Station out."
Janet frowned. "That was abrupt."
"Sure was." I shrugged and began securing the ship. There wasn't much to do.
The big work is shutting down the main engines, and we'd done that a long way
out from Jefferson. You don't run an ion engine toward an inhabited rock if
you care about your customers.
"Better get the big'uns to look at the inertia! platforms, hon," I said. "They
don't read the same."
"Sure. Hal thinks it's the computer."
"Whatever it is, we better get it fixed." That would be a job for the oldest
children. Our family divides nicely into the Big Ones, the Little Ones, and
the Baby, with various subgroups and pecking orders that Janet and I don't
understand. With nine kids aboard, five ours and four adopted, the system can
get confusing. Jan and I find it's easier to let them work out the chain of
command for themselves.
I unbuckled from the seat and pushed away. You can't walk on Jefferson, or any
of the small rocks.
You can't quite swim through the air, either. Locomotion is mostly a matter of
jumps.
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As I sailed across the cabin, a big grey shape sailed up to meet me, and we
met in a tangle of arms and claws. I pushed the tomcat away. "Damn it-"
"Can't you do anything without cursing?"
"Blast it, then. I've told you to keep that animal out of the control lab."
"I didn't let him in." She was snappish, and for that matter so was I. We'd
spent better than six hundred hours cooped up in a small space with just
ourselves, the kids, and our passenger, and it was time we had some outside
company.
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The passenger had made it more difficult. We don't fight much in front of the
kids, but with
Oswald Dalquist aboard the atmosphere was different from what we're used to.
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