Dolph glanced at the floor. So a protest would be useless and it was nobody’s doing in specific. So the whole Universe was a damn conspiracy against him and he had no rights, none. He’d lost anything resembling rights back on the Moon when he tried to take back great-grandpa’s ring. “No, Mr. Femrite,” he sighed, defeated. “No protest. I’ve got the picture.”
Femrite shook his head skeptically. “Well, I’m not quite sure of that, but it’s the best I can do. Good day, then.”
Just like that, his hope of doing something about this miserable, unfair ordeal vanished. Dolph found himself staring at a blank wall in pitch darkness—the room’s only window, near the Hopper’s shadowed south pole, looked away from the asteroid’s bright horizon. He didn’t ask for lights, but looked out through a meter of clear shielding water toward the stars. As his eyes adapted to the dark, the zodiac became visible, each ancient animal sliding by his view every fifty seconds as the ship swung around. The Milky Way passed by with Sagittarius, a bright river with dark clouds here and there. Constellations became harder to recognize as more and more stars confused his view.
Gradually, at the limits of his vision, the Belt itself emerged, its trillions and trillions of tiny pebbles reflecting enough light to make a broad, ghostly band—once his refuge, now, apparently, a nest of callous enemies. Involuntarily, he clenched his fists. Then, faintly imposed on his view of the cosmos, he saw the reflection of his own starlit face.
The door of the room hissed open and glare flooded the room. He turned.
Tina launched herself into his arms. “Dessert time!” she piped. “Why are you crying, Daddy?”
Sasha was polishing seal flanges when Dolph returned from the next day’s structural inspection. She’d fixed one of the flat rings to a table and another to a block of basalt glass and was rubbing them together, slowly turning the top block as she stroked. McCarthy had just put another dozen critical items on the fix-log, he was numb with disappointment, and there Sasha was—polishing seals by hand.
“What are you doing?” he asked, as if he couldn’t see. What he had meant, of course, was “why?” Any effort at all seemed to be futile.
“I called Inspector McCarthy last night to ask what they did to seal flanges to make them acceptable to her, and she told me. I thought it was something I could do myself, by hand, with the ones we’ve got. You see, they’ll fit exactly with a little curvature if you polish them together, and still come apart without damage. It’s like making a telescope mirror.”
“I think you’re wasting your time.”
She shrugged. “Probably. But I had to do something physical. I also checked on who has secondary claims on our rock while you were out.”
“Anyone we know?”
“Ever hear of Cistrojan Enterprise Limited?”
“No.”
“Neither did I, but I cross-checked the media file and there was an article on a mineral rights mess they’re involved in. Guess what law firm is representing them?”
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to make that guess. “Femrite, Carson and Lu?”
She nodded.
“Everyone knows everyone out here.” He groaned. “They’re going to run us out and take our equity!”
Sasha shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe. Darling, the way I see it, we have two options.”
Dolph gave her a twisted smile. “Go ahead.”
“We can always run. Or we could call Inspector McCarthy’s bluff on the fix-log.”
Bluff? McCarthy seemed pretty sincere to Dolph.
“How so?” he asked.
“Start fixing the stuff on site. Ask her to stay until it’s done and play on her sympathy.”
“She could just set a deadline, leave, and kick us out if we weren’t done by then. And what sympathy?”
“Dolph, she gave us the food. I think she’s been trying to keep the door open a crack, in spite of everything.” Sasha sighed and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “If we just look at things her way and try to make things better wherever we can…”
Dolph shook his head. “Sash, it’s a tremendous, heartbreaking amount of rework. And we already did everything right! Everything!”
“I know, darling. But as far as I can tell, it’s the only chance we’ve got left. Let’s not shoot ourselves down. If she’s going to pull the trigger, call her bluff and make her pull it. Until then, if she wants things fixed, let’s fix them! Make it a war of attrition; we’re younger than she is.”
Dolph didn’t know if he had the energy to get out of bed in the morning anymore, let alone fight a war of attrition. But if it meant a chance to stay with Sasha and Tina, a chance to start over… “OK, darling,” he finally muttered. “I’ll try again, for you. I’ll try-just don’t ask me to hope.”
Sasha put her arms around him, and they held each other until Tina started asking for dinner.
Inspector McCarthy looked at her reflection in the polished seals, then set them down on the wardroom table. “By hand?”
Dolph inclined his head to Sasha, who answered. “I got them out myself and did them like a telescope mirror. They fit to a quarter wave.”
McCarthy shook her head, but said “Very well. Let’s see how they work, and if they’re OK, I’ll take them off the fix-log.”
“I’m going to restress the angular momentum compensator tomorrow, Inspector,” Dolph offered, keeping his voice as neutral as possible, “And we figured out how to get Hopper to pressure test the air pipes autonomously, linking with one of the spare habitat brains.”
McCarthy raised an eyebrow, then looked at her comp. “There are now over a hundred items on the provisional approval fix-log. And I don’t have an infinite reserve of time.”
She seemed to think for a long time. No one said anything.
“Hmmpf. Very well. If you do the work right, at least the next tenants can benefit. I’ll give it another week, and we’ll see where you are then. We’ll start again tomorrow morning at oh-eight-hundred, inspect anything you’ve done in the meantime, and advise on work in progress. Agreed?”
They nodded and she reached for her helmet. But before she put it on, she turned.
“One more thing. I need some gravity—for the bones, and the regularity. Modern medicine can do a lot, and I lift 500 newtons daily, but they say that one should have at least lunar gravity after ninety. Digestion more than anything else. My ship shall replace your counterweight. My ship’s computer can handle the slip clutches, so you won’t notice it. Good evening.”
With that, she cycled into the air lock.
Dolph found Sasha staring at him. “Ninety?” she whispered.
He gave her a grim smile. “Over. That’s over twice our combined age; maybe we can outlast her. I’ll go up and do the angular momentum compensator tonight while you bathe Tina. Then you can go up and install your seals.” He thought a moment. She’d be outside a long time doing that. “You should replace the external suit air lines, too. They’re your backup and the old ones are brittle.” A century ago they’d used some kind of polymer that had dried and hardened in vacuum and cosmic radiation. They’d bought new basalt fiber composite air hose that was more flexible and would last longer. He felt better, now that his mind was back on the job. Hopeless as it might seem, there seemed to be something he could do about their situation, and something was a lot better than nothing.
“Darling?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Work slowly and get it right; don’t give her an out, huh?”
Dolph shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll try. Sometimes I wonder who we’re working for, but I think you’re right; it’s our only chance. While I’m out there on the wheel, see if you can find a bio on her. I suspect her maiden name was Murphy.”