Chapter Two

“Hel-lo?” Shona called, from the front door of the Elliott house. The mushroom-domed house was quiet but she could hear a voice speaking somewhere. “Auntie?”

“Shh!” her aunt hissed from the family room. Shona and Saffie hurried in to see what was going on. “Quiet. The news is on.”

“Anything good?” Shona asked.

“They’ve got footage of a landing. Be quiet!”

“Oh!” Excitedly, Shona dragged Saffie through the house to her room and thrust the dog hastily inside. Shutting the door on Saffie’s whined protests, she hurried back to watch the report.

She settled down beside her aunt, who shushed her again and pointed at the glowing images. Uncle Harry, her late father’s brother, on his exercise machine in front of the screen, glanced over to beam at her. “Look at that, baby,” he said, puffing as he paced up and down on the hydraulic steps. “We’re getting further out there!”

“Shh!” commanded his wife.

The announcer’s face disappeared, replaced by the Corporation logo. It dissolved into a puff of smoke, which Shona recognized not as a display of special-effect pyrotechnics, but as the explosive charge of the camera module detaching from the side of the colony vessel on which it had been riding piggyback all the way from Mars. A long black line eddied between the module and its parent ship, which gradually shrank as the camera moved backward until the viewers could see its entire outline. Its surface, brilliant with a sheen of ice crystals, reflected the light of the system’s sun. A tiny shadow consisting of a polygonal box and a thread outlined sharply on the bulkhead had to be the camera and its umbilical. Above it, on the side of the great ship facing the camera was the Corporation logo and the vessel’s name, Geneva.

Off-camera, the announcer’s voice said, “The Geneva carries a complement of two hundred and fifty men, women, and children to their new home. With the establishment of their settlement on Zizzobar III, the Corporation is proud to announce that new sources of rare commodities will soon become available for industry, science, and space exploration. Captain Schönbern, colonists, welcome to Zizzobar.”

“What a funny name,” commented Stevie, Shona’s youngest cousin. He was ten.

“Shh!” his mother hissed.

The ship’s retros fired, the glare obscuring the lower half of the screen until it and the camera module had touched down. As the flames and smoke from burning vegetation underfoot died away, Shona glanced eagerly past the outline of the ship at the new world. In the far background, tree-tall plants of a dark blue-green corkscrewed toward the sky. Some sort of small creature, possibly avian but featureless in the distance, soared above them.

A hatch opened near the base of the ship, revealing an array of glass tubes and other testing apparatus. Lights flashed as the unit performed each test: oxygen quality, bacteria, temperature, and so on. Then the hatch slid shut.

The family held its breath until the gantry was lowered, and the first colonists, wearing protective environment suits, stepped down onto the ground. The leader unfastened his helmet and lifted it off his head. He leaned back as if he were sucking in a great, deep breath of air. He smiled, his thin-jawed face creasing from ear to ear, and signaled to his companions to follow suit. Shona found she was holding her breath, and let it out with a sigh.

“What’s this one going to do?” Shona whispered curiously.

“Shh!” her aunt said again. “They’re digging for precious metals. The place is full of them.”

“Zizzobar,” the off-camera voice continued, “will be supported by the Corporation during its years of development, but will eventually earn independent-world status by establishing its own economy. In the meantime, the people there will work off their debt by setting up a processing plant to mine the planet’s mineral wealth.”

It was no secret that they’d work for less wages than they would if they were contract employees just doing a job, because they were paying off transportation to the planet, food, raw materials, medical care, an expert sociologist, exobiologists, and anything else they needed. Under the narrator’s lugubrious voice Shona and her family could hear loud cheering from the growing party of settlers. A safe, satisfactory, happy landing had been achieved.

Shona watched with pride. She had been on two such missions for the government before coming back to Mars Dome #4, and her memories were vivid ones.

“You wish you were still out there, don’t you?” her young cousin Angie asked, watching her face change. Angie was fourteen, the third of Aunt Lal’s four children, a slim girl already growing tall. Shona smiled sadly at her.

“I do. I envy them being out there. A new world to explore …”

Her aunt shivered. “Ugh! You’d never catch me hiking around in an unsettled wilderness. Who knows what horrors are out there? Give me a nice safe dome any time. Only crazy people would leave a controlled environment for the jungle.”

“Now, Laurel,” Harry began, leaning over the handles of his treadmill. She rounded on him next.

“And you! You’re no better, spending all your time at your bank on loan papers for the Corporation, so they can buy more equipment and send more of our resources out of system. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Lal, they’re our biggest loan client. They do more business with us than all of our other customers combined.”

“Well, they should stop. Pretty soon there’ll be nothing left here for the rest of us.”

Shona stopped herself from correcting her aunt or trying to defend the theories of space exploration, and its benefits for the home systems. This was an argument that Shona had learned long ago that she couldn’t win, and if she was smart, wouldn’t continue. Aunt Lal had an unreasoning fear of anything beyond the edges of the domes. Uncle Harry tipped her a wink behind his wife’s back.

“Laurel, why are you so interested in the landings, if you don’t like to think about space travel?” her husband demanded as the lights came up. He got off his exercise mill, puffing. Uncle Harry was plump. His eternal fitness quest seemed to do nothing more than keep his physique in the state it was. He bore little resemblance to his younger brother, Shona’s late father, except for the freckles and brown hair that she, too, had inherited.

“I just like to see that they got there safely, that’s all.” The older woman waved a dismissive hand, pushing away the uncomfortable topic of space exploration, and gave Shona a squeeze. With her small, delicate features and long lashes, Aunt Lal had been considered beautiful when she was young. She hid her good looks by wearing an unattractive hairstyle, and clothes that were almost purposefully dowdy. Shona loved her but she didn’t understand her. “Hurry up, then, and get washed. Supper in ten minutes.”

Thankfully, Shona excused herself and went back to her chamber to feed her menagerie.

It was hard to believe, looking around at all the laboratory paraphernalia, books and assorted junk that filled her room to the roof, that it would all fit into one modular cargo container, and still leave room for her furniture and wardrobe. The ultrasound unit should have been reclaimed months ago by the Health Department and reassigned to another physician, but the government moved slowly. The unit was too delicate to put in unheated storage, so it stood at one side of her room, taking up precious space. Shona didn’t mind if they waited a while longer to take the machine back. She did periodic low-power ultrasounds on herself to check on the progress of her baby.

The cat and the dog were at her feet at once, demanding attention and their dinners. Saffie leaped up, seeking to plant her big paws on Shona’s shoulders and lick her face. Shona fended her off, and led the way to the cupboard where the food was kept. Harry wound his way around her feet, his narrow tail an erect curve.

“Chow time!” she called, looking around for the ottle. It was simple to feed. The alien liked the same kind of food the cat did: heavy on protein and oils, and the stronger smelling the better. Once the brand she used had been tested by Alien Relations, Shona was given permission to let him eat it if he wanted to.

The alien slept papoose-style in a dark brown pouch on the wall, which had been specially textured so he could climb up and down it unassisted. The floor underneath it was littered with small round disks of wood which were the ottles’ system for recording data. Chirwl wasn’t very tidy. It must be from living in a jungle; when one dropped something from a high tree limb, one didn’t have to worry about it anymore. The highest he could get in Shona’s quarters was four meters, which meant the detritus was always well in evidence. She went over and prodded the soft bag. “Hey! Dinnertime. Are you hungry?”

She peeped inside. There was no one in it, but among the chips on the floor below was a clue.

The alien had discovered he was fond of Crunchynut bars, an Earth candy that Shona loved. Now and again, Shona bought a bag of them to share with Chirwl. She’d had them tested at her own expense to be certain they wouldn’t play havoc with his digestive system. His greed for sweets surpassed hers. He would eat them to capacity if he had had the opportunity, but since they were imported from Earth and were priced accordingly, Shona’s thrift alarm went off whenever she reached for a bag in the store. The last package had been purchased two days before, and she hadn’t opened it yet. And she thought she had concealed it cleverly enough. The trouble was that the little alien was too intelligent not to have figured out where his treat must be. Shona picked up the cellulose candy wrapper and looked around for more.

“I’m going to have to start storing them in my locker at work,” she said to herself peevishly, “and bring them home one at a time.”

There was another wrapper just behind the door. She bent, her belly making the motion ungainly, to pick it up. Just outside the door, almost invisible against the hall carpet was another. And another.

She followed the trail of wrappers into the bathroom. Except for Shona’s office, the bath was Chirwl’s favorite place in the house. His arboreal world was filled with pools of clear water, and the swirling bath was the closest he could come on Mars to such a feature.

“Aha!” she said, pointing from the doorway. Grimacing guiltily, the small sable creature dropped what was left of the Crunchynut bag, and dove fluidly into the water. Shona examined the remains of the package with despair. It was nearly empty. She glared at her charge, who gazed up at her through the water with big, innocent brown eyes. Shona was not amused.

“If you’re not too full,” she announced to the round shape at the bottom of the bathtub, “dinner is served.” From experience, she knew he could read her lips perfectly well. She turned on her heel and marched out.

While she was dishing out the animal chow, her cousin Angie came in to watch.

“You had some mail today,” Angie said, leaning against the doorframe.

Shona plumped the heavy bag of rabbit chow to the ground and dusted her hands together. “I did! Great. Where from?”

“Oh, you don’t want to know,” said the girl coyly. “So I had your messages transferred to my room. Want to give me the communication code so I can read them? I’ll let you know if there’s anything good in them.”

“Oh, you!” Shona leaped for the girl. Angie bounded over the bed, and Shona hurried around it to grab her. Saffie barked, forelegs flat on the floor, trying to decide which one to chase.

A tickling match ensued. The girl was agile, but Shona was faster, in spite of her unwieldy belly, and she used her extra bulk to block the door, cutting off Angie’s escape from the room.

“Uncle!” Angie cried, trying to stop her cousin’s tickling fingers from getting to sensitive spots like her ribs and upper arms. “They’re already on your terminal, really! Gershom and Susan!”

“Thanks, pip,” Shona said, pulling her fingers away.

“It’s not fair, you know,” Angie panted, eyes brimming with laughter. “Two against one.”

Shona let her go with a quick hug, and punched in her comm code. Still excited, Saffie licked at Shona’s hand and worked her bony head under the young woman’s fingers for a scratch. Angie picked up Harry, and carried him out of the room, chattering baby talk to him. Harry assumed a long-suffering expression, and hung limp in the girl’s arms. Shona shut the door on them so she could hear the audio better.

She signaled the console to play the messages, and waited impatiently through the leader which showed the tachyon beacon data, tracing the path the message had taken from its source to the Mars receptor end. By the succession of jumps listed, Gershom was a long way away.

The holotank screen bleeped and went black, and then Gershom’s face was looking out at her, his warm brown eyes crinkled at the corners with his smile. “Hi, sweetie,” he said.

“Hi, love,” Shona whispered. The three-dimensional image made it look as if she could reach out and touch his face. It couldn’t just be the separation from him that engendered poignant longing. He’d been out in space six to ten months of every year almost since they’d met. Hormones must have something to do with it. To her, his sweet tenor had all the music of violins. For a moment she just closed her eyes and let the message play.

“If this reaches you, thank modern technology,” Gershom said in an amused tone that belied the plaintiveness of his words. “How are things with you? Is your back still giving you trouble?

“Ivo, Eblich, Kai, and I are sitting out the worst ion storm we’ve ever seen in the shelter of an asteroid belt. It was lively getting out here to Damson, but it was worth it, sweetie! These folks were so glad to see new faces that they practically signed a permanent contract with us. We were the first to make it here after they declared stability. I’ve seen that kind of isolation fever before, so I wouldn’t take their mark, but it was a temptation. Merson and Company were only two days behind us, and the Corporation a day behind them. We’re on our way back, with only four stops scheduled in between jumps.” Shona’s eyes widened incredulously. Gershom grinned, as if he could see her surprise. “I’ll be back with you in time for the baby’s birth, or as close as time and warp allow. I miss you, sweetie. Hope you’re well. The others send their best. We’re all looking forward to seeing you, but me most of all. I love you, sweetie. See you soon.” Gershom’s image blew her a kiss, and the screen went black.

“Oh! Darling,” Shona breathed, glad tears stinging her eyes. “I can’t wait.” She felt a warm glow of love for him. She missed him. They didn’t get to spend much time together—less than she liked—because of their respective careers.

After a few years of scouting and carrying out small errands for both the United Galaxy government and the Corporation, as well as the governments of individual systems, Gershom had negotiated a loan for his own scout ship, and began trading. Now, after eight years of boomtime (even Gershom had to admit that the time had been just right for him to have prospered so well), the big trading ship he flew belonged mostly to him. He had three permanent employees aboard who also shared in the net profits. As soon as he’d taken possession of the Sibyl, Gershom asked Shona if she wanted to join the crew. She’d always intended to, but at the time, the government had offered her too good a job at too tempting a salary. Later on, she promised him, the Taylor Traveling Medicine Show would take to the skies. They wanted to raise their family on board the ship, but Shona had wanted to get in an honest apprenticeship under senior physicians before she set up shop on her own. Once she’d worked out her blind spots and inexperience, she wanted to set up practice on her own.

Gershom’s work meant that they seldom met, but the separations lent delightful spice to the times they were together. The last time she had seen him, five months ago, he was on his way out to Alpha, no more than a milk run for a swift, long-range trader like his, because he didn’t want to be caught out on a longer trip on which he might get delayed coming back. He wanted to be there for the baby’s birth.

She played the message again, this time for the animals. Saffie came over and dropped her head on Shona’s knee, and whacked her tail against the console joyfully. Harry had appeared immediately when he heard Gershom’s voice, and hunched up into a neat bundle on the bed. The alien jumped up beside him, and assumed the same position. Chirwl loved to tease the cat by imitating what he did. The cat pretended there was no one there but him. Harry showed a feline’s approval for the message from Gershom, slitting his eyes with pleasure, and hunching his paws further underneath his chest.

Shona watched the message over again, feeling a rush of warmth and love for her husband. His large dark eyes looked out at her ardently from the screen. It was hard being without him so long. She put a hand on her belly, which was the perfect calendar of their separation. They hadn’t been together in five months. The tachyon squirt she’d sent to inform him of her pregnancy had been directed to follow the beacons along his registered flight path to tell him that there was a baby on the way. That kind of message was expensive, requiring as it did the redirection of a LaserCom dish, but she’d felt it was worth it. Since then, Gershom had sent a message every week full of love and curiosity, demanding news, asking how she was and what it was like with the baby developing inside her. He had a knack for making her feel that he was close when he was light-years away from her. The screen faded again, and the image was gone.

Shona cleared the thickness from her throat. “Well, moving from soap operas to News of the Galaxy …”

“Hi, twin!” her best friend’s message began. Susan still lived on Shona’s home world of Dremel, making her living as a professional videographer. Her usual work was documentary video films made on a zero-budget basis, which she financed by signing broadcast contracts with the public beacon companies. Her videos didn’t make her rich, but they gave her a measure of critical public acclaim. Aunt Lal’s children loved it that someone they knew made videos. They were favored viewing in the Elliott household. “I have got some great news. Not as earthshaking as yours but not bad for me.” The government had announced that a new trading hub would open in their old system thereby making the real estate more valuable, and creating thousands, if not millions, of jobs. The developers had hired her to make disk records of the sites, and to follow the phases of the construction for the home office. “They hired me over a bunch of others all equally qualified because I said I had my own jets. Can you imagine that old clunker of mine being the deciding factor for anything? When it’s all over, I’ll probably have enough footage to produce a small documentary, and the developers said they’d give me all the help I need. Shona, it is a dream job.”

Shona rejoiced, clapping her hands together. “Oh, it sounds great! I wish I could be there, too.” She pictured the two of them bouncing around the system in the ancient little scout craft Susan maintained. It was a rickety old beast that had been bequeathed to Susan by an older cousin when he left for University in another system, safe as a rocking horse and nearly as underpowered. Secrets told in the absolute security of that old jalopy were securely kept between the three of them. Shona missed that intimacy.

She and Susan had kept in touch since Shona had left in the company of a government caretaker when her parents had been caught in the fatal dome collapse. Though her uncle’s family had been kind to her, she missed Susan terribly. Both eldest children, they had been like Siamese twins ever since infancy. Where Shona was freckled with brown hair, Susan was fair and blue-eyed, but they felt as if they were truly sisters. Their separation had torn away a part of Shona’s soul.

She’d gone through school on Mars, doing well academically, and made other friends, though Susan would never be supplanted as first and best. Susan had been the first one Shona had told about choosing the health profession narrowly over pilot training, and her overwhelming infatuation with Gershom Taylor, whom Shona had met in the lower forms. He was a few years older than she was, and graduated. She’d sent Susan a detailed description of their courtship and romance, and was bolstered by her best friend’s sympathy and advice while she fought through her insecurities.

Susan had managed to come out standby to Alpha Centauri and arrived by the skin of her teeth to stand up beside Shona when she and Gershom got married.

hona was shocked when she realized she hadn’t seen Susan in person since. It had been a good six years.

“As soon as finances allow, I’ll come and see you and little Whatsisname,” Susan offered gleefully. “Or maybe the two of you can come out and stay with me for a while. It’d be good to have you back home. I know what it’s like staying with relatives—no fun at all.” Susan paused, eyes wide with mischief, her hand over her mouth. “Boy, I hope you’re alone when you hear this.”

Shona laughed.

“Dinner’s ready,” her aunt’s voice announced over the com. Hastily, Shona switched off the console and flung off her work tunic. Aunt Lal liked her family to wear something nice to dinner. Hastily, Shona chose something out of her closet that would go over her belly. She put it on, fastening the back as she hurried out to the dining room. She made herself a mental note to answer the transmissions later, when everyone else had gone to bed.

Her younger cousins were already seated. Stevie pushed out her chair for her with his foot.

“Pee-yew!” Dale said, holding his nose. He was Aunt Lal’s second, aged sixteen. His older sister was away at University in Mars Dome #8, making him the senior child at home. “You stink.”

Shona took a cautionary sniff, and sensed nothing unusual. “What do I smell of?”

“Money!” Dale crowed, pointing at her dress. Shona made a face at him. He’d learned that phrase from his parents, and she hated it. He was at the age when he made a point of saying and doing things on purpose that annoyed people.

“Gershom got that for me in a trade, so knock it off,” she warned him. The dress was expensive, made of a dove-gray fabric so light it floated, and embroidered with jewel-like bands and threads of cobalt blue and crimson. Shona admitted to herself that she loved pretty clothes, and Gershom liked to indulge her tastes. It would be a long time before they could afford similar indulgences until Shona started getting space pay again, and without Gershom at home, no place to wear the pretty frocks she had.

“There’s yours,” Aunt Lal said deprecatingly, pointing to a dish. It contained a colorless mash that steamed faintly in the light shining on the table. Shona felt the desperate urge of pregnancy cravings. “I feel like the evil stepmother, feeding you that stuff. There’s nothing to it. Are you sure you won’t have some of the stew? Vegetables? Fruit?”

At the very thought of solid food, Shona’s stomach did barrel rolls. She slid hastily into her chair. “No, thank you, Auntie. Nutri contains everything I need: vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates …”

“Hah! Everything but flavor. It looks like such a nasty mess. And it doesn’t taste like anything at all!”

“Auntie, spacers eat this every day, for every meal, spiced or unspiced. It’ll be fine. I’m used to it.”

“You remember what it was like to want weird things to eat when you were carrying, Lal,” Uncle Harry reminded her gently.

“Well, all right. I suppose I do; I had four healthy babies. There’s second helpings in the pot,” her aunt admitted grudgingly.

“It’s so weird of you to want to eat that stuff now,” her cousin Dale said disapprovingly. He was scornful of everything adult. “You said when you came back from your last mission that you never wanted to look at nutri again.”

“Tell it to my baby,” Shona shot back. Barely waiting for the others to be served their dinner, she started spooning it up, at the same time annoyed with herself that she wanted it so badly. Nutri was the blandest substance that had ever been invented, she was sure of that. The impression she always got eating it was that it was just barely more solid than milk, and, in its unaltered state, of a less interesting texture than mashed potatoes. Yet it could be frozen, fried, or baked, chopped, sliced, or ground into interesting and varied textures, and spiced to taste like any food in the known galaxy. The great Spice War of the twenty-second century was over sources for exotics to give taste to nutri for the masses of astronauts exploring and expanding the frontiers of space for human expansion. Shona could easily understand the need.

Her craving abated about three spoonfuls from the bottom of the bowl, and her distaste for the substance returned. She started to push the bowl away, and noticed her aunt’s watchful eye on her. Reluctantly, she ate the remainder, stifling the gag reflex as her throat remembered the six weeks she and the rest of the specialty team had gone without flavor extracts on the way back from the Cotton Consortium. It was like sensory deprivation. Some of the crew had been near suicide by the time they made Marsport. As soon as they cleared Fumigation, Taji Chandler, her friend the biologist, a man who loved spicy food with about the same ardor as he loved breathing, had walked into the nearest quartermaster’s office, and drunk a pint bottle of curry-flavor extract straight.

Her aunt waited until she put her spoon down. “More, honey?”

“No, thank you,” Shona assured her, hoping she wouldn’t insist. “That was enough.”

“Take your vitamins,” Lal reminded her, pointing to the colorful heap of pills next to the empty bowl.

“Yes, Auntie.” Shona obediently gulped them down. As soon as her aunt was satisfied that she really had swallowed them, she nodded. Shona pushed back from the table and went back to her room.

Nutri! It was one of the necessary evils of her job. Why did she feel compelled, in the midst of variety, to eat the one thing that had been her sole item of diet for two six-month missions planetside, and two extended round trips through space on either side? It was humiliating not to be able to control the cravings and other impulses that hit her. Shona felt a yearning for the excitement of space travel, of being on a colony mission, and a strong restlessness with being groundbound for a whole four years to come. It was as though she were no longer making things happen; they were happening to her instead. She would change that as soon as possible. There was a lot to be done, even before the baby arrived. Until its birth, it was an unknown quantity in her life. But it wasn’t too late to make plans to follow its birth. She and it, and a suitable child-care provider, could continue to go on missions from Earth. It would be an exciting way for a child to grow up, constantly surrounded by new things. One day, they’d join Gershom aboard the Sibyl for good.

The morning message dump had brought five letters and resumes in answer to her advertisement in the child-care bulletin board for a nanny. She was too excited to concentrate on them properly, so she posted them to her personal memory space, and went into the government database to read Help Wanted ads.

The posting board on the Galactic Government computer net had job listings, updated every few hours, for medical technicians, doctors, nurses, and pharmochemists. Instead of searching only for her speciality, Shona let the long list scroll up, scanning individual ads. Who knew? Something different might strike her fancy. If she was near enough to qualify for a job she liked the sound of, she still had years to close any gaps in her education.

Harry settled in her lap as she read them. It wasn’t too early to start checking the colony openings for three years hence; project coordinators liked to fill the rosters as early as possible so they could begin briefings, study the material known about the planet they intended to settle, and introduce the settlers and specialists to one another.

“‘Wanted: general practitioner for a petroleum/radioactives mining colony,’” Shona read, scratching the cat between the ears. “No way. Can you just imagine the crop of industrial accidents when that gets going? They want an ER surgeon, not a GP. Here’s another: ‘GP/OB-GYN wanted for incipient settlement—’ Incipient population explosion, sounds like! Wait, here’s a good one.”

As Shona started to read it, she stopped scratching. A slim, fox-colored paw stole lazily, almost self-motivated, up toward the Delete key at the base of the keyboard. His mistress caught the small pad just before it pressed down, and set it down on her lap with a pat. “Hold on right there, Charley. I might be interested in this one.” Harry, affronted, curled once more into an inscrutable ball and shut his eyes. Shona leaned forward over him to read the entry on the screen with growing excitement.

“‘Project to revive rare fruit tree varieties on pastoral planet seeks general practitioner, departure date 2240. Don’t let an apple a day keep best candidate away.’ These sound like my kind of people.” She gathered up Harry and dropped a kiss on top of his head. “Don’t you think so? They’ve got the same bad sense of humor as I do. And it’s a perfect time frame for me: three years from now, Baby will be just big enough to eat unripe apples. What do you think?” Harry purred and bumped his head under her chin.

There were a few more ads that interested her in the file. She typed in the command for a printout, and went over to the board for news headlines.

On the news menu, the landing on Zizzobar rated News Flash status. She selected the story, and waited through the flashy Martian News logo—a planet with two moons—that showed the source of the news item. The holo which followed was the same footage of the ship descending and the captain emerging and taking off his helmet, with the tedious details of soil and atmosphere tests cut out for brevity.

“Mmm,” Shona said. “Makes it look like you can just unload and go. So why do they need me?” she asked the cat. Harry murmured something, and curled into her lap.

“Is that the news?” Chirwl asked, climbing down the wall from his pouch. He scurried across the floor to join her.

“Yes, it is,” Shona said, patting the bed behind her. “Come on up.” She scrolled through the headlines, passing up uninteresting headlines for stories she wanted to see. “Sports scores, no; trade meetings on Alpha, no. What’s this? New child-care restrictions? Not yet!”

“They will restrict who can take care of children?” Chirwl inquired, rolling over to sit on his tail with his hands clasped over his belly.

“Not exactly,” Shona said grimly. She chose the headline, and waited.

The screen changed to a Martian News logo over footage of a protest march before a large, official-looking dome building. As the logo disappeared, Shona could read the signs the protesters carried: “Space is No Place for Our Youth”; “Restrict Export of Our Most Precious Commodity.”

Off-camera the news reader said, “The Child Protection League, shown here at a rally in Dome Number One, saw its demands answered in this morning’s session of the Martian Congress when a bill, sponsored by Senator Bryan Culsen, was passed into law prohibiting pregnant mothers or the parent in custody of children under age eighteen from leaving Mars. It is said to be in the best interests of children to have a stable environment while growing up.”

“This will keep innocent youth from being galloped around the galaxy without any sense of home or permanence,” a man’s voice said.

“Senator Culsen was quoted as saying,” the news presenter continued over the video, which changed to a scene of a chamber with crowds packing semicircular tiers of seats listening to a man standing at the podium in the center of the arena. “An exception will be made for families departing on permanent colony assignments. The law is expected to take effect within the next month.” The scene changed once again to the protest marchers.

“What?” Shona demanded, leaning in toward the tank. “I’m glad I’ve already got passage off-planet. I’d better see if I can get my departure date moved up so we can get out of here soonest.”

“Do they not think you will care for your own young correctly wherever you are?” Chirwl asked, screwing up his muzzle as Shona reached over to the console to replay the news announcement.

Shona listened to the report twice through, and shook her head. “I’m going to do something about this. No one is going to keep me and my baby out of space.”