Unrefined

If this had been a vid, there would’ve been a computer voice over the comms: “Thirty minutes to containment collapse.” At least I hoped like hell that I had thirty minutes left. I might need every one of them.

But when you’re facing a cascade failure across your computer network, there are no automated warnings, no countdown. I just had to move as fast as I damn well could, and hope I could get to Wilson and get us out before the fusion reactor blew out the end of Refinery Station.

As Leeanne brought the flitter in toward The Tube—the half-klick tunnel of girders that connected Habitat Module to the Reactor and Refinery Module—I hung from its frame and peered ahead, looking for the airlocks into Habitat’s Control Deck. If Wilson wasn’t there, I wouldn’t know where to look for him. There were nearly three million cubic meters in Habitat. And in R&R … but I stopped that thought. I’d rather not get that close to a failing fusion reactor.

Refinery Station was the first of Wilson Gray’s megastructures, massive artifacts in space that were half constructed, half grown by Von Neumann constructor bots. At one end hung the Habitat Module, still mostly unfinished. At the other end of The Tube was the giant fusion ring.

The reactor provided power for Habitat, but the real reasons Wilson had built the station were the two structures on the far side of the reactor: a giant refinery utilizing the reactor’s raw heat for metallurgy, and the two-and-a-half kilometer mass driver that would launch refined metals from the Jovian system back toward Earth. Wilson had invested his entire fortune into the station, and he had convinced a number of other entrepreneurs to sign up as well. Now all those investments were poised to fail, all due to an unexplained computer crash.

Finally we got close enough that I could make out the airlock hatches between the girders. I was glad one of the best pilots in the Pournelle Settlements was flying. As Leeanne neared the closest approach point, the retros fired, bringing us almost motionless relative to Habitat. She had timed it perfectly—less than five meters, Leanne was good—so I leaped.

For a moment I floated in empty space. Jupiter hung off to my right, half in shadow. The sunward side showed the giant cream-and-brown stripes, as well as an excellent view of the famous Red Spot. Closer to me but still dwarfed by its primary was Ganymede, our closest orbital neighbor. Its dark, reddish-gray surface was dotted with ancient impact craters, evidence that the Jovian system was a treasure trove of valuable rocks. Under other circumstances I would’ve enjoyed the sight, but I couldn’t waste time sightseeing. I paid close attention to the task at hand, and I grabbed for a girder.

Contact! My gloved fingers wrapped easily around the girder, a synthetic carbon crystal rod five centimeters across. I grabbed another and arrested my flight. The girders sparkled in my suit light. Their lattice tied the two modules together even in the face of the minimal tidal force we experienced at this distance from Ganymede. The VN bots had spent over a month assembling this giant structure out of carbon that had cost Willy a small fortune to collect; and now at any moment it could all be shattered by the explosion.

“I’m on, Leanne.”

“Don’t waste words, Sam! Go get Willy. Please!”

Wilson was Leeanne’s husband. Nerves of steel were another trait that made Leeanne a top pilot, but hers were strained near their limit. “I’ll get him. You just be ready to pick us up.”

Leeanne and I had been hauling batteries from the magnetosphere generators back to Gray City (the collection of ships and small habitats that housed Wilson’s team as we built Refinery Station). Until the fusion reactor gets up to full output, the generators were the most reliable source of electrical power in Jovian space, converting the radiation in Jupiter’s magnetosphere into electricity and then storing it in batteries. These were one of our most successful products: half the towns in the Pournelle Settlements and a good number of the independent miners bought their power from Gray Interplanetary. But the generator output was too variable, and hauling massive batteries around used too much fuel. With the reactor, Wilson hoped to get a more steady power source for the refinery and the mass driver.

In another organization we could both have pulled rank to get out of such routine work: the boss’s wife and partner and the boss’s Executive Officer drawing a routine transport run? Ridiculous! But not when Wilson Gray was the boss: “Everybody gets their hands dirty” was one of his top rules to keep us in touch with our crew.

And this particular run … Well, it was my fault, really. I had had another fight with Mari Brasco, Chief of Eco Management. It was the same dumb argument that had cropped up since we started dating: her claiming I ran our relationship like I ran a project, me trying to explain myself, and her saying I was proving her point. But this one had been bigger. Maybe she was stressed from all her contract work, I don’t know, but we really blew up. She had told me to choose: boss or boyfriend? Before I could answer, she had stormed out. So Wilson had sent me on the battery run to get me away from the station and give me time to cool off. I suspect he had sent Leeanne because she’s a good listener and he had hoped she could talk me through my troubles.

When we’d heard the news of the computer failure on Refinery Station, though, my dating woes went out the hatch. We’d dumped our cargo in a stable orbit, and Leeanne had grinned and uttered her favorite words: “Hang on, Sam!” We blew most of our reaction mass getting back to Gray City to render aid if it was needed.

The work crews had evacuated before environmental systems could fail completely. It had fallen to Kim Stone to break the bad news to Leeanne: Wilson had refused to leave, trying to get the system under control and save the station.

At that news, I glanced over at Leeanne. I was sure she was thinking the same thing I was: If only we had been there … And I was the reason we were gone, me and my stupid fight with Mari. If I blamed myself, surely Leeanne would blame me, and I expected an angry glare. But she wasn’t looking at me at all. She stared straight ahead out the view port, her normally dark face turned ashen with worry. Flying normally put a broad grin across her round, friendly face; but the grin was gone, replaced by a grim line that turned downward as Kim continued.

The computer failures had spread, so comms to the station were out. Wilson was still on board, and no one wanted to get trapped in there looking for him. But I wasn’t leaving my best friend, and Leanne wasn’t leaving her husband. Her face had turned steely, and she had flown us to the station at a reckless speed and then had pulled four gees as she brought us to a halt.

The girders were spaced to allow a suited person to climb between them. I did so, pushed toward the airlock, and grabbed the hatch ring to stop myself. The computer display on the hatch was useless: letters and numbers scrolling by too fast to read, occasionally interrupted by a complete screen wipe or random pixilation.

I ignored the screen and opened the lid to the manual controls. I twisted the lever, and the Cycling light lit up.

When the lock was in vacuum, I lifted the lever. The hatch opened and I pulled myself in and closed it behind me before cycling the far hatch. My audio pickups gave me the sound of air whistling in. I popped into the Control Deck annex.

I had been inside Habitat enough during construction, so that I knew my way around pretty well. The annex was right off the main cabin of the Control Deck: a bowl shape, thirty-meters radius by ten deep, filled with a triple ring of monitor stations along the surface of the bowl so a supervisor could survey all stations from the center.

I pushed to the door and opened it. Immediately my senses were overloaded, light flashing through my visor and sound overloading my audio. Every computer at every station flashed data, buzzed alarms, called out gibberish warnings, and strobed bright and dark.

I blinked and looked away. “Wilson!” I shouted over the din, but with no hope that I could hear a response even if he made one.

“He’s not here.” Leeanne watched through my comms. Another person might have sounded frantic, but her control didn’t waver. “The motion sensor’s flaking out from all the signal noise, but there’s no firm signal.”

“We can’t be sure. Let me get a better view.” I pushed off to the supervisor harness, a set of straps in the center of the bowl, and I looked around.

I didn’t want to make Leeanne anxious, but I was sure she was right: Wilson wasn’t there. Unless he was jammed behind a workstation where I couldn’t see, he was nowhere on the Control Deck. That didn’t make sense. Where else would he be?

“Sam!” Leeanne called on the comm. “The power monitor station. The panel’s open!”

Sure enough, an open panel led into the guts of the workstation. I dove over. Wilson had to have opened it to trace a data feed. I could tell because he had left his network analyzer there, still tied into the juncture box. But the readout on the analyzer made me sweat: Fusion Deck.

Leeanne’s whisper on the comm lacked her usual steely control. “S-Sam. Don’t do it.”

“What?”

“You know where he went, Sam. We’re gonna lose him. We can’t afford to lose you, too.”

But it wasn’t until she said that that I realized: Wilson had followed the signal to the Fusion Deck. He was less than fifty meters from a glowing ring of fusing hydrogen plasma that was just waiting for containment to fail so it could escape.

Fusion reactions are so difficult to sustain that they can’t go critical like a fission reactor. When something goes wrong, the reaction just collapses, destroying the reactor but not posing a threat outside the immediate area. The station was designed so that Habitat Module would be safe in the event of a collapse—but the Fusion Deck and the refinery would surely be destroyed.

So despite Leeanne’s warning, I was going after Wilson. “We’re not losing him.”

“Sam!”

“We are not losing your husband, Leeanne! Don’t waste time arguing. Just get your ass over to the far end and wait for us.”

I went back out through the airlock and into The Tube. There were elevators between the modules, but I crossed the distance faster on my jets.

My rad meters didn’t change appreciably as I settled to a halt at the far airlock. The radiation from the reactor was contained by shielding except where it was used in the refinery, and what escaped the shielding was barely above background radiation from Jupiter itself.

I had selected a lock near the control center. At least I hoped so. I was so used to the computer answering questions like that, but I feared to trust my suit comp. It hadn’t been compromised yet, but if I tied it into station information, it might be. I didn’t need my suit failing me now!

When I got inside, I wished I had trusted the computer. I wasn’t in the control center, I was in a darkened room. Flickering lights through a thick window in the far wall showed part of a giant torus, fifteen meters on the short radius and ninety on the long. The fusion reactor! I had entered in a service room off the main reactor chamber, and that room was hot! I checked my meters: not hot in the radiation sense, or at least not dangerously so, but the temperature was over 30°C. Any warmer and it would start to tax my cooling system. I could hear the cooling fans whirring up already.

I looked around the darkened room. The flickering showed no light switches, just a bank of storage cabinets, a row of work pods, and a wall of monitors—malfunctioning, of course. Once my eyes adjusted to the flicker, I picked out two hatches. One led into the reactor chamber. I pulled open the other, exited the service room, and sealed the hatch behind me. Immediately my cooling fans grew quiet, and my temperature began to drop.

I still sweated, though. It wasn’t from the heat.

At least I knew where I was going now. I floated in a large transit corridor; and in this part of R&R, all corridors led to the control center. The corridor was in darkness, but my suit light showed a hatch about forty-five meters away. That was my destination.

I checked my comp timer. Despite moving as fast as I could, it had been more than ten minutes since our approach to the station, and thirty minutes had been just a best guess. How long did we have? I broke several safety regulations by using my jets to race through the corridor.

When I got to the control center, I entered a room designed almost as a mirror to Control Deck: a giant bowl with three rings of screens. And just as in Control Deck, most of the screens displayed gibberish. The one main difference from Control Deck was my target: the suited man working inside the panel of one of the stations.

“Wilson!” Suit comms couldn’t penetrate station shielding, but they worked fine in the same room.

Without pulling his head out of the panel, Wilson answered, “Sam? Good! Hey, buddy, gimme a hand. Need you to jettison the mass driver, and once that’s done, cut us loose from The Tube.”

“Boss!”

“We’re gonna lose the reactor, Sam. No hope, I can tell. Refinery too. We just have to salvage as much of the station as we can.”

Typical Wilson, worrying about assets and losses while his dream disintegrated around him. He could be passionate when he sold an idea; but when it came to implementation, he was a cold-blooded numbers guy.

And as usual, he made sense. There were months and fortunes tied up in the station. If any of it could be saved, we had to save it.

I flew over to the superstructure controls. These weren’t part of the main computer network, so maybe they weren’t corrupted. Maybe.

If they were, our ploy was already doomed.

But if this was so important to Wilson … “Boss, what are you after in there?”

Wilson answered tersely, “Evidence.” He went back to work, cursing as he did. When he started swearing, I knew better than to interrupt until he’d solved the problem.

I studied the superstructure controls. They were clean, or at least not flashing gibberish like all of the others. These were part of the construction network, not the station operations network; and when the time had come to hook all the systems together, Wilson and the network guys had debated whether it made sense to tie construction in. I’d never paid attention to the outcome, but it looked as if Wilson had decided to isolate the system.

I’m not a computer guy, but I’m a competent engineer and physicist. I understood the basics of the controls, but it was designed to make it difficult to accidentally cut the station into pieces—like I was trying to do.

I worked through the layers of safeguards and confirmations while also figuring out the process. There were rocket engines on the mass driver and the R&R Module. Explosive bolts would cut the mass driver loose, and the rockets would burn on a preset trajectory. Then I could do the same for R&R.

But first I had to choose the trajectories, feed them to the rockets, double check everything, and confirm everything one more time, all while trying to learn an unfamiliar interface.

I knew that I was taking too long. My suit timer showed twenty-two minutes when I finally felt the station tremble. If it had been the reactor, it would’ve been a lot more than a tremble, so that must’ve been the first explosive bolts.

I watched on the screen and confirmed that the mass driver was drifting away from the station, picking up speed as the rockets began to burn. Over ten minutes to figure out the controls.

I hoped I would move faster on the second set.

But I didn’t have to. Wilson nudged me aside and handed me a clear bag containing a computer board. “Sam, I’ve got this. Get that board out of here.”

I looked at Wilson through his suit visor. His face, darker than Leeanne’s, nearly always bore a smile. It wasn’t from humor—though Wilson had a great sense of humor—it was friendliness and confidence. Wilson Gray was happiest when we had a challenge to tackle. So when I saw that his smile was gone, I grew even more worried. “Boss, I’m not—”

“Now, Sam! This wasn’t an accident, and the evidence is on that board. Get it off this station!” And Wilson turned to the superstructure controls, hands moving twice as fast as mine.

Despite Wilson’s orders, I hesitated. He pushed me away, and I tumbled through the air. Wilson didn’t need my help and he wouldn’t be dragged away, and arguing would only distract him. Whatever that board held was important to him, so I had to get it out, like he had ordered. I cycled through the nearest airlock and hoped that he would not be too far behind me.

Just as I pulled myself out of the lock, I felt the whole station shudder. Somewhere inside the big disk-shaped module, the magnetic fields had passed a critical point of imbalance. The laws of physics took over from there: on the one hand, the delicate fusion reaction snuffed itself out harmlessly in the first microsecond; but on the other hand, the cooling system failed and the high-pressure coolants escaped and damaged the ring structure.

In a chain reaction, the massive magnetic coils that had taken person-years to assemble and fit into place suddenly broke free from their blocks and ripped themselves to shreds—giant, fast shreds that tore through shielding, tore through bulkheads …

And tore through the hull!

I fired my jets at max throttle, getting me away as far and as fast as possible. I barely escaped the flying shards of tin and aluminum and carbon compound.

Wilson hadn’t cut the modules apart. The shudder propagated up the girder tunnel, causing it to twist and flex dangerously.

Some girders nearest the R&R Module snapped entirely, something I’d never seen carbon girders do. The lattice structure absorbed the shock, but I had to fly over a hundred meters before I felt it was safe to cross between the rods.

And then I just hung outside the girders, looking back at the wreckage that had been R&R. My best friend’s greatest dream, and now his destruction. I floated silently and waited for his widow to pick me up.

Life in the Settlements didn’t give us a lot of spare time, not even to grieve.

I assembled a crew, and we went into the shattered husk of R&R to retrieve Wilson’s body.

I remembered his last words: This wasn’t an accident.…

I still didn’t know what he meant, so I recorded everything for … well, for evidence, I guess. The scene was horrific, his corpse filleted by the fast-moving shrapnel. I locked down my recordings. No way would Leeanne see these if I could help it.

Then I had to get ready for the funeral. It took me a while to find my cabin in Habitat, since I still wasn’t familiar with the new station. I had only visited my quarters before long enough to stow a small kit bag with clothes and essentials. When I found my hatch, I went inside and sealed myself in.

And then, for a few scarce minutes alone, I cried. Wilson Gray was dead, and people needed me to carry on, but I needed … I needed Wilson. If only I had been here sooner … But that thought led me to a dark vortex I might never escape, so I wrenched myself out of it.

I had to find something to do, some activity to anchor myself. So I opened my kit bag, unzipped the toiletries pouch, and pulled out my razor. I set it for a short trim, just enough to even out my goatee and mustache. As the blades spun and the vacuum sucked away the bristles, I stared at my eyes in the mirror. They were red against pale skin that bagged around them. I wished I had some water to rinse them, but Habitat didn’t yet have water to the residence decks. I would have to live with the red. And with the patches of white in my beard and scalp. When had those appeared? When had my hairline receded so far? This project had made me old, but that day I felt the impact all at once.

I combed my hair, put on a fresh pair of coveralls, and pushed out of my cabin and into the half-completed corridor. Many of the wall panels were missing, exposing conduit and tubes and electronics. There were no signs and no obvious way to navigate, but I didn’t need them. I just followed the other stunned, red-eyed faces as they floated their way to the recycler.

As per his will, we gave Wilson a small ceremony—I spoke, and Kim did, as did a few others as Leeanne floated in tearful silence—and then we fed him to the organic recycler. New crew from Earth had trouble with this concept, but the recycler is our version of the natural order of life and renewal. New recruits understand this on an intellectual level, but it still creeps them out. After you’ve been through a few funerals in the Settlements, though, you start to feel it: Wilson Gray was gone, but his essence would be with us forever.

Most of Gray City attended the service in person or by televisit. The only ones who couldn’t attend were the crew I had assigned to stabilize Habitat. We also had visitors and televisitors from across the Pournelle Settlements, the collection of independent towns and stations inspired by an early aerospace pioneer who was the first to describe the energy efficiencies of mining colonies in the Jupiter system. The Settlements were loosely affiliated in trade and support alliances, but most of them prized their independence. It had taken all of Wilson’s incredible charm and diplomatic skills to unite them in the Refinery Station project. Some had openly called it Wilson’s Folly. They had the good taste not to mention it on that day, but the phrase would soon come back, I felt sure.

By chain of command, Leeanne should’ve directed the ceremonies and the aftermath; but my steely-eyed pilot had finally given in to her human side. She had watched her husband and her future all shredded in an instant. She had made my pick-up like a pro; but after that she had just stared at the wreckage, her eyes sunk in her suddenly hollow face. She had barely mustered the energy to answer simple questions since. I had had to take the ship’s controls, and since then everyone just turned to me as if I were in charge of the entire city. Maybe I was.

I never signed up for this, Wilson. I wasn’t the decision maker. I was the guy who carried out the decisions. That was my part in our triad: Wilson had the wild dreams and sold them to the world, Leeanne was the practical one who told him when his dreams were too wild, and ol’ Sam Pike led the grunt work to make the dreams come true.

Now I had to hope that I could remember the lessons Wilson had taught me as I stepped into his role. That included something that always came natural to him, something I could never be comfortable with: leading meetings.

Immediately after Wilson’s service, as Kim led Leeanne back to her cabin, I called an emergency meeting. Even limiting it to department heads, there were still thirty people gathered in the Atrium of Habitat, and six more by televisit. That was too many for an effective meeting, but I couldn’t guess which department might have a handy miracle or two. We needed every miracle we could scrape up.

The hubbub in the Atrium was more uneasy than I’d ever heard it. Even in the darkest can-we-do-this hours of station design and construction, the department heads had all been on board, drawn in by Wilson’s enthusiasm and quick answer to any problem.

Now I saw them clumping into worried groups, bobbing in the air as they talked among themselves. The faces I saw … Some looked almost as haunted as Leeanne’s. I needed to get them all on task—whatever the task would be.

I pushed off to the chairman’s harness in the center of the atrium, but I didn’t strap in. It just felt too soon for that, and I was still kicking myself for not being at the station when Wilson needed me. So I strapped into my harness next to his.

Then I raised my voice, but not so much as to echo off the walls. “All right, people. Come to order.” Somehow it was easier there in my harness. I could pretend that Wilson was just “away,” and I was running things in his stead as I had done many times before. So I followed our usual routine. “Status reports, people.”

I looked at Hank Zinn from structural engineering, but he hesitated, staring at his hands. Before Hank could answer, the tumult broke out again. This time I did echo: “People!”

They dropped silent again. “Okay, we can’t pretend we’re not shook up. When you get out of here, you all have my permission to panic for an hour. But Wilson Gray hired professionals, goddamn it, and I expect you to start acting like it! Or none of us are gonna last long out here.”

More tumult. Mari’s voice broke over the rest. “We’re not going to last anyway!” There were shouts of agreement.

I looked at Mari: a petite woman with golden skin, red-brown curls, and usually a confident attitude that fascinated me. Even now, stressed and grieving, confidence in tatters, she still appealed to me. She was still the fireball I had fallen for. We had dated for several months before our latest fight, and I really hoped we weren’t over. So I hated to turn on her, but I had to put this down now. I tried to sound cold. “If you believe that, Mari, there’s the hatch. I need a united team. If you’re giving up on us, hitch a ride to Walkerville or Callisto One or Earth, for all I care. I’ll comp the transit costs in your last check. Is that what you want?”

Mari glared at me, and I was coldly sure that our last date had been our last date. But she shook her head and bit her lip. I gave her a second in case she wanted to add something, then I continued. “If we’re going to come out the other side of this, it will be by following Wilson’s troubleshooting protocol: tally our assets and status; define the problem; refine it into a solution; assign tasks to our assets; and design the process and build whatever new assets we need. So it’s tally time, people. Hank?”

Hank turned to me. His voice was steady and calm. Maybe I had handled that right. “We’re in bad shape. Not fatal, but bad. Habitat still has a slight wobble.” We could see that just by looking around. The walls occasionally flexed as a slow standing wave passed through the structure. “We’ll have that under control in a couple hours. But The Tube took serious damage at the reactor end. We can salvage the material, but it’s going to take a month. R&R is worse. The debris is orbiting with us in a cloud, but some of the material is not recoverable at any reasonable cost. The mass driver is safe, but its orbit is unstable in the long run. We have maybe three months to boost it to a stable orbit before it draws too close to Ganymede and tidal force pulls it apart. We can do that, if you’re willing to spend the fuel.”

I nodded. Wilson had given his life in part for the driver. We wouldn’t give it up now. I turned to Mari. “Eco?”

Mari’s voice was bitter. “As I tried to tell you, we’re screwed in the long term. We have consumables enough for now. We can scavenge some, and we can barter with other Settlements. There’s still demand for our batteries, right?” She looked at Sissi Sneve from power management, and Sissi nodded. “But our loads from Earth … Well, we’ve got twenty months in the pipeline. And that may be it. My buyers back on Earth say it was already difficult to get credit before. Sellers doubted Mr. Gray’s plan. Now that the news is out, that credit is drying up. We’ll see gaps in the pipeline twenty months down; and four or five months after that, the pipeline will stop.”

I tried to sound conciliatory. “And can we conserve enough to make the difference?”

“Maybe …” But her expression didn’t look convincing, a combination of a glare at me and a trembling frown.

Discussions broke out again; and for the first meeting in over a year, I resorted to the air horn.

The shriek echoed off the walls, and some put their hands over their ears. When the echoes died, I continued as if nothing had happened. “Then we’ll find another answer, like always. Power?”

Sissi summarized the generator status and the power market—the two bright spots of the meeting—and I moved on to the next topic. By the time most of the departments had reported, I noticed a flash of short platinum hair at the nearest hatch. Kim had returned to the meeting. Her face was even paler than usual, and her delicate face showed—no, not sadness, fury! Oh, shit, what now?

Kim gently squeezed through the crowd to join me, sliding up to my side while trying not to draw attention. She handed me the computer board from the reactor, and she pushed a report to my comp. While I listened to the status reports, I checked Kim’s data.

Oh, shit, I thought again. This was bad. It might be the last straw. Wilson had been right, it hadn’t been an accident. This could break our spirits.

Or maybe … As the last status report completed, I surveyed the room. “Thank you. That’s what I expect from you all: your best effort as professionals. And we need that.” I held out the computer board. “I thought we were dealing with an accident. But it turns out we have a whole different problem: sabotage.” Immediately the room broke into shouts, and I had to use the air horn again. “I’m pushing Kim’s report to you all. It won’t stay secret, so I won’t try. This circuit board that arrived from Earth six months ago has a very clever, invasive virus hard-coded into its core. Ladies and gentlemen, somebody tried to stop us. Maybe kill us.”

This time I let the shouts play out. I wanted them shouting. I wanted them angry. And amid the shouts, I heard two words more than any other: “Initiative” and “Magnus.” Magnus Metals ran an Earth orbit refinery that sapped much of our profits in refining fees; and the System Initiative were the bureaucrats who thought they ran space from cushy offices in Rio de Janeiro. Between their regulations and more fees and fines, they sapped much of the rest of our profits.

Refinery Station had been Wilson’s giant middle finger to both of them: we would do our own refining, and the Initiative were welcome to fly out to Jupiter to try to enforce their regulations where the laws of physics were the only real authority. Either might be our saboteurs, maybe even both. I didn’t need to work out who, yet. It was enough to know that the two things Settlers hated most were the government squeeze and the corporate squeeze. This news had unified the department heads more than anything I could have said.

But Wilson had taught me: some messages are more effective from “the troops” than from the boss. So just as Wilson had often done to me, I tapped out a message and pushed it to Kim. When her comp buzzed, she looked at it. Then she nodded and gently pushed out until she was in among the others, shouting and talking like the others. And as a lull hit, she shouted over the rest. “They tried to kill us!”

The echoes were louder than the air horn. “Yeah!”

“Are we gonna let them stop us?”

This had been one of Wilson’s simplest motivating questions; and the answer this time shook the walls worse than the standing wave. “Hell, No!”

Right then, I knew: I had my team again. We would survive.

Now I just had to figure out how.

That’s what I thought I would do; but I had no idea how my time would actually be spent. I had never appreciated what Wilson had done all day. More meetings. More soothing of frayed nerves. More reviews of plans and schedules. More calls back to Earth, pleading with creditors and suppliers not to cut us off until we regrouped.

More calls to our business agents, too, to try to track down the source of the virus. Yeah, like that was ever gonna happen. Whoever did it had covered their tracks too well.

There was so much to do, and every day the list grew faster than I could whittle it down. I started sleeping in my office, when I found time to sleep at all. No matter how hard I tried, the work piled up. Maybe Mari was right: maybe Gray Interplanetary was dead like Wilson, and we were just waiting for it to stop breathing.

And Leeanne … Leeanne might’ve been walking dead herself. For the first week, she didn’t come out of her cabin, and she barely ate the food that Kim brought her. Then she started coming out for a few hours at a time, but she spoke little. Her eyes were still wide and red, her face muscles slack and expressionless. One look told you she was still in shock. People tried to engage her, but the conversations always trailed off into uncomfortable silence. Over time she started wandering into the middle of work areas, sometimes talking but mostly watching. People complained to me. They couldn’t say it, since legally she was now the top boss, but they wanted me to keep her out of their hair. As if I didn’t have enough problems. I added that to my list, but not near the top.

Three weeks after the funeral, though, Leeanne pushed herself to the top of the list, floating into my office as I went over power management reports late at night.

She waited for the hatch to close; then for the first time in weeks she found real energy to speak—and she threw it all at me. “Samuel Pike, what the hell are you doing to my company?”

My mind froze. I don’t back down from a fight. Normally a challenge like that would have me shouting back, or worse. But this woman was my boss now, and my best friend’s grieving widow. With Wilson gone, she was the closest friend I had. I felt grateful to see her engaged in something, even if it was chewing me out.

I muttered, “Leeanne … We’re trying … to put something together here.”

“Bullshit!” She waved an arm to gesture at the station, giving her a slight spin until she hit a wall and arrested her movement. “They are trying, but they need direction from you. You are floundering!”

Despite my concerns, my hackles rose. “Damn it, Leeanne! I’m doing the best I know how! You—” I caught myself before I could spit out an accusation. “You have any ideas for what I can do better, I’m all ears.”

Leeanne’s tone calmed, but she didn’t fall back into her depression. “What you can do, Sam, is stop driving yourself so hard. You’re looking worse than me, and I’m the one who lost my husband! You’re going to kill yourself, and kill Wilson’s dream with you. What you have to do is what Willy would do: prioritize and delegate.”

I sighed. “I know, I’m trying.”

Again she said, “Bullshit!” And again she gestured at the station. “I’ve been all over Gray City, Sam. Everywhere I see the same thing: people are holding onto hope because you and Kim charged them up; but they’re slowly losing it because your decisions take so long that the situation changes before they hear from you. Everyone’s going through the motions, but there’s no plan in effect. And the more you look like a zombie, the more they lose faith.”

I breathed out slowly. “You’re right, Leeanne. I’ve tried to hold things together for you. Now if you’re ready, boss, I’m happy to take your orders—as soon as I get some sleep.”

“Uh-uh!” Leeanne shook her head, bobbing against her handhold. “I never wanted to be the boss. Wilson knew that: I’m a counselor, not an executive. You haven’t had time to check Willy’s final orders yet, but they name you as his second in command, subject to approval of the Board. And with his shares plus mine, I have controlling interest on the Board, so you’re approved.”

“But Leeanne, I’m doing a miserable job! You said so yourself!”

“That’s because you’re trying to solve all of the problems instead of just the big ones. You think you’re delegating, but your people tell me you’re not. You’re delegating tasks, not decisions. That’s why you have no time to sleep! Any time you’ve got a problem where your department heads can decide, let them! Let Mari deal with the suppliers on Earth. She always did for Wilson.”

“Mari and I …” I swallowed. “We’re not getting along.”

“That’s a luxury you can’t afford right now. Treat her like a trusted professional, not an ex-girlfriend. Mari’ll do her job if you let her.”

“Well …”

“Samuel Pike, if you let your wounded pride put an end to Gray City, I’ll launch you straight into Jupiter! Mari’s a grown up, now you be one!

“And speaking of launching … Hank is waiting for you to get off your ass and order him to salvage the mass driver. He has a plan, but it’ll take a lot of fuel. He can’t authorize that without orders from you. Every minute you wait, the driver gets closer to Ganymede, and the salvage costs grow higher.”

“We have over two months …”

“And if you’d acted immediately, we would’ve had three months. By now the fuel costs have more than doubled. You give that order now Sam, or so help me I’ll steal a tug and start hauling the driver back myself.”

At that I smiled. She would, too. I pulled open a channel to Hank. “Hank? Yeah, it’s Sam … Hey, sorry I’ve gotten buried here … No, you’re right and I’m wrong, so I’m doing the apologies here. You’re authorized for fuel charges and overtime budgets to go get that driver … Yeah, the plan you submitted—Damn, was that four days ago already? Okay, revise the plan as needed, and I’ll approve it … No, don’t wait for final approval, I trust you … Thanks, Hank! I look forward to your reports.”

I disconnected and looked at Leeanne. “How’d I do, boss?”

“Enough of that ‘boss’ business. You did okay. Now you make a call like that to all your department heads, and maybe we’ll get things under control here. Start with Mari.” I frowned at that. “Mari. Now.”

I spread my hands up, pleading. “But Leeanne … That fight …” I couldn’t find words. They brought back the pain.

Leeanne’s expression softened. Suddenly I saw my friend, Wilson’s wife. My pain grew as she asked, “What about it, Sam? You two have fought before. You’re a hard-nosed engineer, she’s a fiery Cuban, that’s no surprise. You’ve always gotten past it before.”

I tried to speak, but I had a catch in my throat. I coughed and said, “But this fight … This is why we weren’t at the station. This is why—”

“Hush!” Leeanne shouted as she pushed herself across the office to me, stopping herself by wrapping her arms around me and pulling my head down to her shoulder. She buried her face in my own shoulder and said, “Stop it, Sam! Don’t say that. Do not say that. I never want to hear that again.”

I tried to hold back, but I found myself sobbing. “If I had been here—”

“No, Sam. You wouldn’t have been here. You would’ve been with the prospecting fleet. Or negotiating with the other Settlements. Or on any of a hundred other errands for Wilson, just like every other day of this project.”

“But—”

“No buts! So this is what it’s all about? Sam, someday I’ll find who killed Willy, and I’ll make them pay. But it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me! We’re survivors, we’re not to blame.”

Then I really cut loose with the tears, and Leeanne joined in. More than I had needed sleep, I had needed tears, and someone to share them with.

Eventually, though, I remembered that I had work to do. “Okay, boss—Leeanne,” I corrected. I pulled away and wiped my eyes. “Do I look ready for more calls?”

Leeanne smiled at me. It was weak, but it was a smile. She had needed the tears, too. “Stop worrying about looking strong.” She pushed back to the hatch, out of the comm pickup. “Call Mari.”

I nodded, my body bobbing in response, and I called Mari. As soon as her face appeared on my comm, she started in on me. “Sam Pike, do you like making my job impossible?” I shook my head, but she continued before I could answer. “I just answered a call from Bader Farms. I had them, Sam. I had them! I had them convinced that we were stabilizing our situation, and you had a plan to meet our contracts. Then you called them, and you ruined the whole thing! They said you didn’t strike them as confident, so why should they be? They’re ready to cancel our future pipeline loads, maybe even sell some of the in-transit loads to Walkerville.”

She paused to breathe, and I finally snuck in a response. “I’m sorry, Mari.”

Mari continued. “And furthermore—” Then she shook her head. Red-brown curls became a shimmering cloud. “What did you say?”

“I’m sorry. I screwed up, and I was wrong. If I stay out of the middle, can you fix this?”

Mari’s jaw dropped open, and it took a few seconds before she answered. “Maybe. But I’ll have to offer points.”

I nodded. “Take them out of my account. It’s my mistake, so Gray City shouldn’t pay for it.”

Mari cocked an eyebrow. “And you’ll stay out of it?”

I nodded again. “It’s your department. Wilson trusted you, and Leeanne and I trust you. I’m sorry if I gave you any reason to doubt that. If you need me, tell me. Otherwise, it’s hands-off.”

Mari almost smiled then. “Okay, I need to work on repairing this. And … Thanks, Sam.”

I disconnected the call and started placing more. As I did, department heads pulled tasks from my task list, and some tasks immediately switched from Backlog to In Progress. A couple even switched to Complete. When I finished, I looked at the full list. Those forty-some calls had done more to clear the list than I had accomplished in three weeks.

I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, Leeanne, you were right. I’m still learning on the job here. What’s next?”

“Next we hold an Executive Committee meeting, just like the old days: the Chairman, the Counselor, and your Executive Officer.”

“But I’m—All right, I used to be XO. Now I’m Chairman, so who’s the Executive Officer?”

“Kim Stone, of course. She’s already doing every task you’ll let her. I’ve promoted her and made the pay retroactive—assuming we have anything left to pay anyone with. She’s outside waiting for us to have it out. Are we good?”

I thought long before answering. I had so much to learn about being in the top seat; but with Leeanne’s help, it had already gotten easier. And now with Kim’s help as well, maybe I could handle it.

I smiled and nodded. “We’re good. Hell, we’re great! Bring on the next challenge!”

Leeanne knocked on the hatch, and it opened. Kim floated in and closed it behind her. The two women floated there, one large and dark, the other a pale blonde pixie; but both were strong, especially inside, and I was going to need that.

“You straighten him out, boss lady?” Kim asked.

Leeanne raised her free hand. “Ah-ah-ah! None of that. Sam’s the boss, so let’s get in the proper habit.”

Kim nodded and turned to me. “Right. Okay, boss, I think we need to get the mass driver ASAP. Tidal force won’t be large enough to damage it for a couple weeks, but the strain is mounting. It won’t take much strain to misalign the rings.”

I tried to answer, but Leeanne jumped in. “You’re right, but Sam has that handled already.” Yeah, I was the boss all right, except when Leeanne wanted to be in charge. But I could work that way. It was comforting to have somebody watching my back.

Still, I had to keep up appearances. “Yes, Hank has approval to modify his plan as needed. You keep an eye on it. Don’t interfere with him, but make sure we’re not blindsided by any unexpected charges.”

I felt better. Now what next? Well, I would follow Wilson’s protocols. “Okay, let’s tally our assets and status. We have almost our full crew. Only a few people have quit. We have Habitat, our prospecting fleet, our construction fleet, and all the smaller stations we built before Habitat. We have the fuel depot and the generator stations. And we have active contracts to sell power here in the Settlements, and we have contracts to deliver raw metals to Earth orbit. We also have twenty months of supplies in the pipeline, and we can get more as long as we don’t default on any of those delivery contracts. Mari will persuade our suppliers to give us a little more time, since we’re technically not in default yet.”

Leeanne added, “And we have the mass driver.”

“Yes, we have the driver, and power to run it, though that will tax our generating capacity quite a bit. Anything else?” Both women shook their heads. “Okay, that also defines the problem, pretty much: we need to find some way to fulfill those contracts, or somehow generate equivalent income to keep the pipeline open. Our credit is stretched too thin: if it looks like we’ll miss a month or more in the pipeline, people will start abandoning us. That’ll create a feedback loop, and we’ll collapse long before the pipeline runs dry. Other Settlements will lay claim to our assets, and who could blame them?”

Kim broke in. “Boss, I’ve made a few inquiries with friends in other Settlements. Callisto One is primed to take us over. Almost as if they were ready in advance. And they’ve been making offers to some of our key staff.”

I nodded. “Interesting …” Callisto One was the Initiative’s official presence in the Pournelle Settlements, and had been a thorn in Wilson’s side. We all guessed how they had been “ready in advance”; but I shook my head. “Our people hate the Initiative. If we have any hope of getting through this, they won’t go to Callisto. Now we just have to find that hope.”

And for the first time since that call from Kim three weeks ago, Leeanne smiled. “Oh, I figured that out. While there was no hope, I was happy to let you screw things up. Boss.” And her smile actually became a brief grin. “But once I saw an answer, I knew I had to kick your ass into gear so you could make it happen. They won’t follow me, but you’ve got the touch. All you need is some hot pilots—me, and I can name others—who really understand gravity deep in their guts. You’ve all been worried about tidal force and its danger to the mass driver; but tidal force is still a force, just like any other. And force can be dangerous, but it can also be harnessed.”

It took a month to turn Leeanne’s idea into a plan, and then another three to put the plan into effect. It took over two months just to pull the mass driver out of its doomed orbit and into one that we could use.

Mari had persuaded our creditors to give us a little more time. Maybe they figured they couldn’t lose much more than they already would, and they could afford to stretch a little in hopes of a payoff. Maybe they just had a lingering respect for Wilson’s legacy. Hell, for all I knew his ghost was out there somewhere still applying that old Wilson charm.

But one thing I do know: it wasn’t our plan that sold them, since Mari never told them what it was. We had enemies, but we didn’t know exactly who they were nor whom we could trust. So we kept the full plan to just the Executive Committee as long as we could, and doled out details on a need-to-know basis. Once we were sure the plan would work and no one could stop us, then we filled in everyone in Gray City. The cheer when they understood almost shattered the walls of Habitat. Mari even smiled at me.

When the day came for us to test out the plan, Leeanne insisted on flying one of the chase ships, and I insisted on flying shotgun with her. She tried to argue me out of it, but I pulled the trump card I’d held back since our first Executive Committee meeting. I looked her straight in the eyes and asked, “Leeanne, am I in charge here or not? You can’t have it both ways. If you as the Board say no, I’ll sit back and watch you run things; but if you as my Counselor say no … then I’m happy to take your advice, but I’ll do things my way.”

For almost a full minute, I thought I’d been fired. Then Leeanne answered quietly, “We can’t afford to lose you, too, Sam.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’ll be flying with the best damn pilot in the Pournelle Settlements.” And that settled it. I was in the copilot’s harness as Leeanne idled between Jupiter and the driver. We watched the feed from Kim and the team on the far side of Jupiter as relayed by polar comm sats.

I called over the sats. “How’s it going, Kim?”

Light speed delayed her response by over a second. “Fantastic, boss. The first load just launched, and we’ve got three more coming. Take a look.”

I switched to Kim’s station camera, which showed a large lump of ice, dirt, and valuable metals. If we sent that lump to Earth directly, Magnus would charge us a huge fee for clearing off the dross (which they claimed was useless, but we knew they made a few percentage points from the volatiles); and then they would assay the remains.

Somehow their assayers always came up with a value far lower than our estimates. If it were random, the error should have been in our favor once in a while, but it never was.

That was why Wilson wanted to break up the rocks ourselves, ship only the metals (which were easier to mass drive, since the driver was strong enough to grab even paramagnetic minerals), and deliver direct to our customers instead of to Magnus.

Now four such rocks were on a trajectory close to Jupiter, and we would rendezvous on the other side. I got on the chase fleet circuit. “Folks, get your rest. Targets coming your way in about six hours. Sleep while you can.”

But we didn’t sleep, and I doubt anyone in the chase fleet did.

Like us, most spent the six hours watching on the polar cameras as the first rock dove closer to Jupiter. When the rock passed within the Roche limit and started to break apart, I shouted over the chase circuits: “Yes!” And at least a dozen voices echoed mine.

Jupiter’s tidal force pulled the near side of the rock much harder than the far side, and the ice and dross couldn’t hold together. The metals that remained wouldn’t be as pure as we would’ve gotten from the refinery, but they would be good enough to meet our contracts. I might have to give back a few points, but we would meet our contracts. We would survive.

And someday, we would build another refinery, and Wilson’s Folly would become Wilson’s triumph.

But that would be in the future.

I got back on the circuit. “Computers will feed target trajectories to you over the next three hours. We’ll assign pickups. Plant your bots on the big targets, then look for targets of opportunity.”

The drive bots would attach themselves to the metal fragments, calculate a burst plan, and drive the metals to the induct of the mass driver.

There the magnetic fields would grab them and accelerate the metals on their path to Earth. It all took careful computer calculations. That had chewed up much of our planning time: making sure our computers were clean.

The effort hadn’t been wasted: we found three more virus traps waiting to be sprung. Someday, somebody was going to find out just how angry I was that they had killed my best friend.

But not today. Today we had metal to chase. “Leeanne, you picked our first target yet?”

“Yeah, boss, but it’s not on the computer’s list.”

“Huh?”

She pushed a spectrographic report to me. “That blip there? That’s nearly a quarter tonne of platinum. Computer says it’s on a bad trajectory, we’ll never recover it this time.”

“Then leave it! We can get it on another orbit!”

“And let some other Settlement claim it after we did all the work? Hang on, boss!” And instead of waiting for the fragments to approach, Leeanne powered up the engines. She turned us back, and suddenly my view port was filled with brown bands and the Red Spot. I was pushed back into my couch at over three gees as we dove toward Jupiter.

What could I do? “Leeanne, you’re fired!” But I said it with a big grin on my face, accentuated by the acceleration.

Leeanne grinned back even bigger. “Take it up with the Board. After we get that platinum!”

She laughed, and we sped deep into Jupiter’s well. At a certain carefully calculated point, Leeanne flipped us around and fired the thrusters to slow us. I watched the computer project our course, and I was happy: the old Leeanne was back, at least for now.

“Not to backseat drive, Leeanne, but how do we get this baby on course?”

Leeanne pushed her analysis to my comp. “I think we can do it with three drive bots. Yeah, that’s a lot, but this lump is worth more than any three we’ve picked out.”

I nodded and readied the drive bots for firing. When our velocity nearly matched the lumps, I fired off the bots. Then I watched them on the scope.

One … The first bot touched down, scrambled for a hold, and finally attached itself firmly. Two … The second bot attached. And … “Damn!”

“What is it, boss?”

“Third bot didn’t attach. It might make a second pass, but that’ll burn a lot of fuel. It might not do the trick. I’ll launch another.”

“Never mind, boss. I’ve got a better idea!”

Suddenly I felt the explosive thump of the tether launching. “We’re gonna haul this sucker to the driver ourselves.”

“That’ll take a lot of fuel …”

“You’ll approve it, boss!” Leeanne laughed, and I laughed as well as the tether struck the lump and scrambled for its own attachment.

When the tether controller showed a firm grip, I gave Leeanne a thumbs up. She gunned the engines and between our tether and the drive bots, we started nudging the platinum into a new trajectory. We passed a few other likely targets as we flew, and I launched drive bots at them as well; but Leeanne was right: this lump of platinum was the best possible proof of our plan.

As we approached the driver induct, I knew today would be a very good haul. I pushed the Release button on the tether controller, and the platinum was on a free trajectory straight for the induct.

We didn’t go after more fragments, not quite yet. We just sat in silence for several minutes as the platinum drifted closer and closer to the mass driver.

When it got close enough, the magnetic field grabbed it, a weak hold on the platinum itself and a stronger hold on the metal web the bots had woven. The lump turned slightly, lining up with the magnetic rings; then it picked up speed. Soon it shot through the rings and out of sight.

We sat there a few minutes more, neither of us speaking.

I could see by the instrument lights that Leeanne was crying. I felt tears welling in my own eyes, a damned nuisance in zero g. But Wilson’s dream was worth a few tears.

Then I realized we didn’t have a contract for platinum. I pulled open a comm channel. “Mari, I have good news! You can start contract negotiations for a mass of platinum, specs attached.” I pushed the specs into the data feed. “That should buy us dinner for a while!”

After the light speed delay, Mari responded, and her grin was a mirror of my own. “I have good news too, Sam. We’ve already got our dinner orders filled. I forwarded our suppliers a copy of Kim’s satellite feed. As soon as they understood your plan, they upgraded our credit rating with all services. We’re not back where we were, but we’ll get there.”

She broadcast the video? But I hadn’t authorized that.

Then I saw Leeanne staring at me, and I knew there was only one proper response: “Great work, Mari. Gray City owes you. I owe you, big time.”

Mari nodded. “You bet you owe me! Dinner and beer for starters. And I get to choose the place. Someplace expensive, with real meat! I’m sick of soy.”

“Real meat, Mari. I promise.” I closed the comm channel, and I felt warm inside.

I looked over, and Leeanne was still watching me. No time for that! It was time to get back to work. “Pilot! Next target!”

“Hang on!” Leeanne grinned through the tears as she wheeled the ship around again. I grinned, too. For the first time since the sabotage, in the middle of a three gee turn, I relaxed.

If I could’ve spared breath against the turn, I might have sung. I could pay people. I could feed people.

And finally, the word fit: I was the boss.