Far Gravity

By Don Solosan

Welcome to the most dangerous real estate in the galaxy. Psychologist Michael Nadir is sent out to the distant Hod system to find out why so many asteroid miners are committing suicide. At once he learns that miners are insular, anti-social, depressed, and dangerous. When he gets dragged into an adventure with seemingly unstable Hannelore Lott, he learns that he will have to start thinking--and behaving--like an asteroid miner, if he wants to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Solosan
• Release date: Feb 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005444341

Don Solosan

Don Solosan's first professional publication was in L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future, volume 15. He is also an avid photographer, videographer, and sculptor. He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.

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Far Gravity

Don Solosan

FAR GRAVITY

Copyright © 2020 by Don Solosan

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Edited by Heather Ellingwood

Cover Design by Gnomus

Cover includes a portion of Cosmic Reef--a public domain photo by NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Coolville Digital Production

ISBN 978-1-00544-434-1 ebook

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To Diana, for being there

at the beginning...

Prologue

The seashell vessel was a delicate creation of swirling whorls and long spines, with all of the finery and fluff that one would expect of a top-of-the-line space-going cruise ship. There were spacious staterooms—nearly three hundred of them—compartments that might have served as dining rooms and ballrooms, and observation decks with broad views of space. It must have been breathtaking to stand before those portals as the ship went sailing past alien worlds. For the seashell ship was a gravity skimmer; housed in the tips of those dozens of spires were tiny spinning gyroscopes. Those devices were tied into a navigation computer that measured the slightest variations in their rotations to map the eddies and flows of local space-time. The captain calibrated his course with that map, using the gravity wells of substantial objects (stars, planets and moons, mostly) in their path to slingshot a cargo of tourists from one scenic view to the next. To the eager sightseers on those decks, it must have looked as though the worlds they were skimming over were nearly close enough to touch.

We can only speculate what happened to them in the vicinity of the Sea Horse Nebula, based on an examination of the wreckage.

Perhaps they were skirting the outer boundaries of the gas and dust making up the nebula’s tail when an alarm sounded. The navigation computer would have registered the danger first, but it’s unclear if it had the programming necessary to understand the data it was being fed by the gyros. It’s possible that the first clue the crew had of the problem was a shudder that passed the length of the vessel, and their initial thoughts may have been that something had struck the hull. While they scrambled to ensure that the double walls sealing in the atmosphere had not been breached, they lost precious moments that ultimately sealed their doom.

The ship had an engine capable of faster-than-light travel to propel it through the vast expanses of empty space that separate solar systems, but that drive and much of the ship’s instrumentation were taken. Disaster analysts can only guess that in the chaos following the initial impact they were unable to get the drive ready for a jump to safety. Focused on the wrong problem and operating with too little data, the captain may never have seen the great Dark Spot looming just ahead of them. Then the ship was spinning out of control, and disaster was inevitable.

At that point an emergency beacon kicked on.

In an expanse of what looked to the naked eye to be empty space, a grey plain of rock and dust rose up like the hand of a giant and slapped the vessel, and a real impact shudder raced violently through the hull. The ship rolled, throwing up clouds of dust and snapping off spines. Then it settled low on its port side. Integrity was lost in some of the aft engineering spaces, and the keel had snapped in two, but the vessel wasn’t dead. They still had power—the emergency beacon, a repeating sequence of squeaks and squawks, continued without interruption.

Despite what the analysts say, it’s impossible to imagine what kind of chaos must have reigned in that crippled ship immediately following the crash. Sitting at an odd angle and bulkheads awry, the once familiar lines of the trim ship may have suddenly seemed nightmarish, like someone’s sick idea of a funhouse for spacefarers. The atmosphere was probably thick and noxious with the smell of electricity and smoke, and filled with the cries of the injured.

This we do know: the majority of the crew and passengers were still alive when the attack came.

Their initial reaction to the searchlights coming through the portals might have been one of elation. The passengers may have even crowded the observation decks and waved at their supposed saviors. Then, at one of the forward hatches, there was a shower of sparks and the terrifying whirr of a massive, high-speed can opener. The entire airlock was torn from the ship’s hull, and the resulting explosive decompression killed anyone unlucky enough to be in that section of the ship. Bodily fluids boiled away in the vacuum, leaving oddly-shaped dark patches on the decks, like shadows of the dead.

Standing in the ragged hole where the airlock had been, a giant figure calmly surveyed its surroundings. It was roughly humanoid, with a domed top in place of its head. One of its arms was outsized, massive.

It made its way forward to the captain’s console on the bridge, where a scope traced the beacon’s pattern. The giant raised its outsized arm and sent it crashing into the scope, silencing the signal.

In time they would breach all of the seashell ship’s compartments, killing the remainder of those aboard, and then they would go to work.

Chapter 1

Forget everything you think you know about asteroid miners. Trust me, most of that nonsense you picked up watching the 3V is wrong. At the peak of the space craze, there were seven shows set in the belt (we know, we’ve seen ‘em; most everything makes its way here sooner or later), but as far as anybody knows, not one person involved with making those programs has ever come out here to learn what it’s really like. Maybe the producers are lazy. The Hod system is 90 light years away from Earth, after all. Or maybe they’re just cheap. Who knows? Anyway, it seems it’s easier to just make stuff up. No skin off our noses…

But it means that you Earthers are walking around with some funny ideas. Such as:

Asteroid miners are brawny, rawboned hunks throwing steamy gazes at space maidens with heaving bosoms (Outpost HOPE). Sorry pal. Try maintaining that buff physique in a low-gravity environment. Most folks who spend any length of time out here tend to get pale and spindly. Calcium loss is a big problem, too.

Or—

Asteroid miners are boozing, noisy (but lovable) scalawags (Meet the Hotheads). For one thing, alcohol and low gravity are a very bad combination, and for another, anyone so blatantly obnoxious as Pa Hothead would get himself vacuumed in a heartbeat.

Or—

My favorite misconception about asteroid miners: that we are natural born thieves and prone to acts of physical violence (Payload!). If Outpost Hope mixes its notions of deep space life with the conventions of soap operas and romances novels, and Meet the Hotheads is just a lowbrow, blue collar sitcom, then Payload! is pure American West mythology, shoving the heroes and concerns of the wild frontier into deep space. I mean, really—shoot-outs with ray guns? And it ain’t gold and silver we’re pulling out of those rocks, baby, it’s iron and nickel. Not much romance or excitement in stuff like that, but nobody in Tinsel Town wants to hear about it. Still, the shows are good for some laughs when our chores are done.

Outside of the fantastic realm of 3V programming, we know we’ve got a bad reputation. The dregs of the Hod system all seem to have migrated to the asteroid belt, one visiting dignitary wrote over seven decades ago, where the details of their squalid lives are shrouded by a veil of monk-like silence. And he was being fairly polite. One flustered local administrator said, Miners are a throwback to some prehistoric age when men killed their food with sharpened sticks, grunted to communicate, and dragged their women around by the hair. Somebody had damned well better do something about them before they devolve into monkeys.

If it’s any consolation, miners are as much of a mystery to the executives of the Stivarius Corporation, the company that oversees mining operations, as they are to Hollywood producers, visiting dignitaries, and planetary admin flacks. And that’s why they sent us the good Doctor Michael Mijae Nadir.

A proximity buoy registered the jump jet’s approach long before any human eye could detect it. The buoy notified the harbormaster and flashed a standard challenge to the vessel. The jet’s AI responded with the requested manifest information in a compressed binary shriek, they negotiate for a millisecond, and then the jet was cleared and received approach and docking instructions. The AI confirmed, then the proximity buoy returned to monitoring its assigned slice of space as the jump jet silently glided past.

In the distance, the Las Vegas of deep space lit up with golden, sparkling letters five stories tall:

GOLD DUST

Dwarfing the letters and the rotating station, a high-resolution hologram of a grizzled Prospector watched the jump jet’s approach, and at one kilometer he was programmed to start waving. At six tenths of a kilometer, the O in GOLD flickered and went out; the Prospector gave it an annoyed kick and it came back on, full. At two tenths of a kilometer, he winked and pointed out the assigned bay, and its guide lights went on. The jet matched trajectories with the spinning station and docked. The Prospector took off his dusty ten-gallon hat, wiped the sweat from his brow as if he’d just completed a particularly difficult task, then disappeared.

Inside the Gold Dust’s low-G docking section, a pressure hatch clanged open. The jump jet’s pilot, a woman lean and young, climbed out of the airlock. Despite her youth, Hannelore Lott was an experienced and respected asteroid miner. She dogged the hatch shut, looked around, and spotted the one-armed bandit waiting for her.

Welcome to the Gold Dust Luxury Resort and Casino, it said breathlessly. Feel free to swipe your bank card through my reader, grab the handle, and make your fortune!

Eyeing the little machine with suspicion, Hannelore started walking down the corridor.

Yes, ma’am, I’m feeling hot, hot, hot!

It followed her on tiny feet.

Have you ever been this way before, pardner? I don’t seem to recollect your face. But no matter—the adventure of a lifetime starts right here, right now! Come on, give me a hit!

Hannelore sauntered over to a restroom. The automatic door slid open, and she entered.

Of course, the bandit said, you’ve had a long trip from the mining outpost. Time to freshen up a bit before diving into all the fun.

The machine followed, and the door closed behind it.

Perhaps I could take this opportunity to explain our system of pari-mutuel wagering on holographic horse races, it inquired.

Once inside the restroom, Hannelore picked up a hand towel from a table and turned around. On her way out, she tossed the towel over the motion sensor up near the ceiling. The door closed before the bandit could follow. The bandit paused, waving its handle, trying to activate the door to no avail.

As she continued down the corridor, Hannelore heard knocking and a shrill cry.

Son of a gol-darned bitch!

She smiled, did a little hopscotch step, and caught a lift tube to the zero-G center of the station and the loading docks, where she found Eddie Coggins, a scruffy-looking teenager from her outpost. They knocked fists in silent greeting while stevedores loaded his cargo carrier with cases of brand new pressure suits. The dock foreman swam over, hand over hand, using loops built into the bulkheads.

Are you Lott? he demanded and received the slightest of nods. Look here, I told your people—your package ain’t gonna be up here. You gotta go down to hotel registration.

A metal clang drew the foreman’s attention and he began to growl. There was a wrench floating away from his workers.

Scrub monkeys! There’s a reason for them lanyards other than to make the tools look pretty! And how many damn times I gotta tell you: lefty loosey, righty tighty!

As he swam off to continue his appraisal of the stevedores’ shortcomings up close and personal, Hannelore and Eddie shared an almost telepathic look: all non-miners are crazy.

A drop shaft took Hannelore hurtling down to the station’s outer edge. For a few strangely exhilarating moments, it felt like she was contracting at an enormous rate as gravity increased to Earth normal. For many miners, riding the drop shafts was the only reason to visit the Gold Dust, and it annoyed the proprietors to no end. Hannelore popped out on the casino level next to a video wall lit up with the Prospector’s image as he panned for gold in a scenic Californian river stream; he glanced over and winked. Hannelore ignored him and a little shakily started walking spinward. Not that it really mattered. Either direction would eventually bring her around to the Desert Rose Hotel, but she didn’t want to spend any more time in the Gold Dust than she absolutely had to. For one thing, the place was huge; for another, it was deliberately designed like a maze. On one visit, she had spent an hour and a half going in circles just searching for a lift to return to her jet, too stubbornly proud to ask the employees for directions—and she didn’t want to succumb once more to the forced perspective tricks that hid the gentle curvature of the floor and the exits. If that wasn’t bad enough, they seemed to rearrange the layout on a regular basis, so to her it never looked the same way twice. As far as she could tell, the idea was to keep gamblers trapped inside until the casino was done with them and that notion frankly horrified her.

The station designers had gone hog wild with the Roaring Forty-Niners theme. Inside the casino, stanchions were covered with material molded and painted to look like aged wood, all the doors were the swinging saloon variety, and most of the light seemed to come from flickering faux gas lamps. Real, imported sawdust covered the roughhewn floors. Spitting was encouraged. The employees wore period garb, and the tourists could rent costumes if they wanted to go around dressed as cowpokes. Almost everyone carried a brace of rubber six-shooters; the security guards dressed as sheriff’s deputies, of course, and their weapons were disguised stunners.

The original idea was to build a station that would appeal to asteroid miners, give them a down home kind of place to blow off steam, buy supplies, and so on. They failed miserably, and the casino was, as always, nearly vacant of mining folk. The gamblers present were, Hannelore noted, dirtsiders on vacation and slumming rich Earthers. One peacock of an Earther sat mesmerized before a one-armed bandit, sipping from a multicolored drink called a Rotgut Royale. He pulled the handle. The wheels spun.

Ching! Gold Coin. Ching! Spurs. Ching! Pistol.

That was close! the bandit said. Give ‘er another twirl!

The tourist pulled the handle again.

Gold Coin. Gold Coin—the final dial spun—Ching! LEMON.

Ooch! You almost had me that time, buddy. Spin ‘em again—come on!

Hannelore watched as the drunken tourist yanked the one-armed bandit’s handle again—and it siphoned another hundred DUCs from his bank account. DUCs are the local currency (Decentralized Units of Currency, time stamped to the exchange rate at the moment of issue, to prevent speculators from manipulating the currency for profit).

Amazed and appalled, Hannelore moved on, slipping around a column to avoid another one-armed bandit moving in her direction.

Smile when you say that, pardner! it cried, making a ricocheting gunshot sound.

At the loading dock, Eddie Coggins had finished checking the invoices for his cargo, signed for the load, and was preparing to depart. The hologram Prospector watched as the loading dock’s seal released the carrier, gently pushing it away. At the minimum safe operating distance, the Prospector gave a thumbs-up signal. Eddie glanced out through the carrier’s bulbous canopy and thumbed his nose at the hologram.

Then he was turned around in the outbound navigation lane and on his way back to the outpost.

Hannelore knew she was clear of the casino when she passed through swinging doors and found herself standing in the middle of a dirt street bordered by wooden sidewalks and lined with saloons (noisy), dry goods stores (over-priced), tonsorial parlors (trendy), and the Desert Rose Hotel (ostentatious). The sun was a blazing light fixture moving on invisible tracks in the curved, painted sky; at night, she had heard, they turned down the light and the moon crept overhead. It was the closest she had ever gotten to seeing the Sol system.

Hannelore entered the Desert Rose. A long, polished teak counter ran the length of the far wall, and behind it stood an impeccably groomed female clerk in gingham. Hannelore guiltily ran her fingers through her unruly, short-cropped auburn hair before crossing the lobby.

The clerk looked up from her administrative duties and took in the small miner’s garb with a glance.

Ah, are you Lott?

Hannelore gave the subtlest of nods.

End of the counter, the clerk said, made a motion to the left with her head, and returned to her work with a deftness that said I am an efficient employee, to her manager and I don’t have time for you, to the miner. Which was just fine with Hannelore. Chitchat wasn’t her style.

Hannelore strolled to the counter’s end where a well-dressed man lazily stood, one elbow hooked on the counter, a pile of baggage at his feet. He was playing with a data-pad, she saw. It displayed video of miners working around a rock, shooting it off across space.

"Hot head miners find the asteroids rich in metals and minerals," the pad said, which are posted on the bid board. Open bids are accepted from the consortium’s member corporations. Once bidding has been concluded, teams of wildcatters break the rocks loose from gravity’s grasp and slingshot them to the ‘holding zone’ in space for the specific orbital factory designated by the purchaser. Every rock carries a beacon which emits a unique serial number and the ID of the corporation with legal ownership.

Hannelore vaguely registered that the information the pad was putting out was correct, but she was more concerned with locating the mysterious package she was to transport back to the outpost. The counter was empty. There was nothing on the desk behind it either.

The well-dressed man clicked on another link to play a clip of a miner with intense, scary eyes.

"It’s kind of hard to explain. Every miner wants a chance to touch the mystery," he said.

The man gave a little snort; he pressed another link.

Hannelore was on the tip of her toes leaning over the counter to peer up and down at the floor. Empty. The clerk noticed her confusion.

No, no, she said. Doctor Nadir? Your pilot’s here.

The man shut the data pad and turned, and Hannelore got her first good look at him as he lazily favored her with a smile. He was in his mid-30s and oozed an Earth-bred healthiness and a shallow charm that she had seen before in rich tourists.

Hello, pleased to meet you. He held out a manicured hand. Hannelore didn’t respond, and there was an awkward pause.

Dr. Nadir shifted his weight from one foot to the other, obviously puzzled. The ratty little miner standing before him just stared at him. Then she made the slightest glance at his bags.

He understood. Do it yourself, the self-reliant spirit of the colonies. He scooped up his bags and followed her out.

Thank you for the book, doctor, the clerk said, holding up an autographed memory card.

"Giselle, please—Michael," he insisted. He made a nervous gesture at the departing miner’s back. You’re sure this is—

Giselle nodded wearily. She had seen it all before.

The doctor hurried to keep up with Hannelore.

The name’s Nadir, he said, pronouncing it nay-DEER. "Michael Mijae Nadir. The company sent for me; I’m a psychologist. Perhaps you’ve heard of my self-help book, The Seven Staircases to Wholeness?"

Hannelore walked on, ignoring him.

No? No. Okay, he said.

To Hannelore it seemed as though her passenger was talking without ever stopping to take a breath. He talked to her even though she refused to answer him; he chatted with the casino employees they passed on their way to the lift, and he even spoke to the one-armed bandits, most of which knew his name.

Howdy, Doc, said one, sit a spell, chew the fat, try your luck.

"Can’t. I’m… that is, we’re," he motioned to the miner ahead of him, on our way out.

Where you headed, buckaroo? asked another.

I’m going to a mining outpost, he said.

Well, son, it replied darkly, you just be careful now, you hear?

Hannelore was somewhat alarmed to see that they had attracted a large number of the slot machines—which tended to happen when you talked with them—and they were starting to swarm behind them, some singing Vaya Con Dios, Amigo to the doctor. She tried speeding up, but Nadir refused to change his easygoing, loping gait to keep up.

Isn’t this place amazing? Nadir asked. Wait! Have you seen this? he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her through a pair of doors into harsh sunlight. Hannelore was struck by a sudden increase in both temperature and humidity, and by the sharp aroma of horse manure. They were surrounded by the giant animals, by jockeys in bright silks, and by gentlemen and ladies in country attire.

It’s the paddock at Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. They run the Triple Crown here every hour! Nadir said, turning to follow the pounding of hooves on the track. Look at them go! The throng in the grandstands cheered.

He stooped and picked up a clod of dirt. But look here, he threw the dirt. It only flew a few meters before striking an invisible wall and falling to the ground. It’s all done with hologram generators. Have you ever seen anything like it?

A jockey approached them, leading a colt by the reins. There’s still time to get a wager down on the Derby. I can help you, if you like.

Hannelore felt herself getting turned around as she avoided the illusionary beasts and people. To one side, she glimpsed that the hologram generators were starting to conceal the entrance they had come through. She put her head down and charged straight through an obese man who yelped and jumped aside, spilling his mint julep drink, and she crossed the threshold before the doors disappeared.

Nadir shook his head, and turned to the jockey. Miners. They don’t talk much, do they?

They don’t gamble much neither, the horse replied.

Once in the jump jet, Hannelore pointed out a storage cabinet for Nadir’s baggage, then climbed into the pilot’s seat and buckled her safety harness. She powered up the jet, and a heads-up display appeared before her presenting the jet and its surrounding environment in a 3D simulation. There were two other vehicles operating around the station, she saw.

"Hello, Hannelore," the jet’s AI said with a relaxed, friendly tone. All systems are operational; Brieholz included. The harbormaster has cleared us for departure on the blue outbound lane.

In the distance, a colored strobe beacon began to fire. From the jet’s speakers came a steady pulse to match the lights. If they strayed from the lane, the pulse increased in both speed and pitch, and the blue light would turn red. The pilot of a vessel ignoring the rules would receive a verbal warning to correct course. Any pilot failing to heed the warning would have their license temporarily suspended. Three violations and it was revoked. Permanently. This at last had finally managed to stop miners’ hotrodding, at least in the vicinity of the station.

Nadir had finished stowing his luggage and floated forward, one small bag under his arm. Preparing to sit, he put a hand on the empty copilot’s seat.

Hannelore stopped him cold with a look.

Nadir gingerly removed his hand. She indicated a fold-down passenger seat with a terse nod. The doctor meekly pulled himself to it and strapped himself in. He placed his bag between his feet and held on tight to the armrests.

There was a muffled thud! as the jet disengaged its moorings and they floated away from the station. When they were free and clear to navigate, Hannelore allowed the jet’s AI to maneuver them away from the Gold Dust. Once the Prospector had waved his goodbyes, the jet turned to face the blue beacon, and they boosted into open space where they could make the jump home. The AI had already laid in the course for Outpost G. Hannelore confirmed it, and they were on their way.

Behind them, the lights and finery of the Gold Dust Station shut down, leaving what appeared to be a giant, mottled hubcap in space.

HD70642 (Hod, to normal folk) is a Sol-like star (spectral type G) lying in the direction of the Puppis constellation. It is much younger than Sol, only a billion years old. A total of five lifeless (indigenous life, that is) planets orbit the star. The fourth planet is a gas giant with twice the mass of Jupiter. The innermost is a fist of rock wrapped in a crushing sulfurous haze. The fifth is a barren stone in the deep cold of space. The early explorers referred to them as Big, Small, and Lonely, respectively.

Two planets fall within the system’s habitable zone. The first of those two planets (technically, HD70642-2) is slightly smaller than Earth, has a passable atmosphere, but very little water. The second (HD70642-3) is a third larger than Earth and is blanketed with thick ice. They’re known as Hot and Cold, and those names have stuck despite urgings from posh executive-types to assign real names—perhaps to avoid the kind of corporate glad-handing that occurred when the Stivarius Corporation came in, signed their exclusive mining deal with planetary admin, and promptly slapped their name on the asteroid belt.

How best to describe the asteroid belt? Imagine that you’re standing on a rock in Sol’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, or even the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt out past Neptune. What do you see? Nothing. Well, to be fair, you see lots of stars which is lovely all by itself, but no other asteroids. Not one. The belts are so sparsely populated that you can travel straight through them and never really see anything. But the same view in the Hod belt reveals rocks in every direction, from pebble to moon-sized, all swirling gracefully in a complex dance understood only by the Gods of Gravity. On paper all legal and proper it might be the Stivarius Asteroid Belt, but to us it’s The Dance.

Asteroid miners believe that there are only two types of people in the world: those who see The Dance and are forever changed by its majesty, and those who feel a million sudden, crushing deaths sneaking around behind them and can’t stop peering nervously over their shoulders.

Whoa, just like on Three-V, Nadir said, staring out the canopy. Holy shit, we’re not going in that mess, are we?

Hannelore grinned privately, switching to manual control. The jump jet spun and dove, and suddenly they were in the thick of The Dance and one short step away from destruction. Through the canopy, it appeared as if every rock in the belt was suddenly drawn to them with a violent purpose, and Doctor Nadir jerked nervously in his harness as each one came close to smashing into them. With each new approach, the AI barked Proximity alert! and he expected the hull to crack open and spill him into space. If he had bothered to look at the heads-up display, Nadir would have seen that the pilot was intentionally bringing them close to the larger rocks and expertly skirting them.

Then Hannelore twirled the jet and leveled off. She brought them into a clear patch, released the 8-Ball controller pilots use to maneuver the vessels in three- dimensional space and allowed the AI to take control of navigation.

Nadir had only a few moments to relax when something struck the jet hard, rattling his teeth. Even Hannelore seemed surprised: there was nothing in the display to indicate the near approach of a navigational hazard.

What happened? Are we losing atmosphere? he yelled through the blaring alarms. He hadn’t even thought of asking for a pressure suit when they boarded, and he was certain he was going to die in a particularly gruesome fashion—

And Hannelore smiled.

A shape had appeared ahead of them, a cargo carrier familiar to her, and the radio crackled.

Tag H—you’re it!

Eddie Coggins goosed the carrier just out of the jet’s reach, then spun away. The game was on. Hannelore chased Coggins through the belt. The bigger ship was amazingly agile, and despite his youth, Coggins was an experienced pilot. He skirted the larger rocks to confound her sensors, and his ship’s icon vanished and reappeared in her display. Finally, she brought the jet alongside him. A huge, ship-crushing rock loomed in their path.

"Proximity alert," the AI said.

Hannelore edged nearer, but Coggins pulled away, denying her contact. Then he drew closer again, daring her to stay on course with the rock that was now filling the canopy. It was probably a hundred kilometers in diameter; not quite a giant, but substantial as far as rocks go.

"Proximity alert. Hey, I’m not kidding!"

Nadir leaned back in his seat, as if shifting his bulk could push the jet out of danger. As the rock drew closer, he was pressing his full weight against the bulkhead. His bag slipped from between his feet, spilling card copies of The Seven Staircases to Wholeness to float through the compartment. As the ship jinked this