SHAREEN FITZKELLUM
As they boarded yet another transfer ship on their way to the Fireheart nebula, Shareen masked her excitement with impatience. She glanced at her grandfather. “It sure is a roundabout way to get there. We’ve been traveling for days.”
“Where we come from isn’t exactly on the beaten path, my sweet,” said the bearded and barrel-chested Del Kellum. “And neither is where we’re going. This is the last leg of our trip. No more transfer stations.”
Rather than admitting that she was anxious to be leaving home, as well as her parents and her two younger brothers, Shareen settled into her padded seat. She counted down the minutes, waiting for the cargo ship’s acceleration to drop off so she could unfasten the safety restraints. “I’m eager to start working with Kotto Okiah. If he’s half as impressive as his track record, we’re going to learn a lot.”
In the adjacent seat aboard the transfer ship, her friend Howard Rohandas sat quietly, without complaint. He was seventeen, the same age as Shareen, and just as smart, though a lot more shy about it. Keeping himself busy during the voyage, he worked practice calculations on his pad. He looked up at her grandfather. “Thank you, sir, for bringing me along. This is a tremendous opportunity for both of us.”
Del laughed. “Always the polite boy. We promised your parents we’d take you where you can learn.”
“I can learn wherever I am, sir, but I am glad to study with Shareen. We work well together. I hope we will impress Mr. Okiah.”
“And I’m glad you’re keeping my granddaughter focused, young man. Shareen sometimes needs a little nudge and incentive.”
“I won’t need any incentive at Fireheart,” she said. “How many others get to do what we’re about to do?” Though embarrassed by the comment, Shareen couldn’t deny that Howard brought out the best in her. They exchanged ideas, built upon each other’s progress, came up with better work than either could do individually. It was the best kind of synergy. Shareen excelled at developing bold broad-strokes concepts, but she wasn’t patient enough to work out the fine details. Howard, though, was a detail person. Great discoveries required both sets of skills—Shareen thought they were a great team.
And Fireheart Station, a Roamer complex in a whirlpool of cosmic gases, was a place rich with possibilities, a place where the well-known Roamer genius Kotto Okiah was building what he claimed would be his masterpiece, the greatest physics experiment of his career. Kotto had supposedly retired, but he continued to dabble with ideas, inventions, theories … so many that he couldn’t even finish them. After all he had accomplished for them, the Roamer clans let their scientific hero do whatever he liked. And the Big Ring experiment sounded fascinating. Shareen wanted to be part of what Kotto was doing. And so did Howard.
Three days earlier, they had left the Kellum distillery complex, the big industrial platforms that rose from the tidal flats of Kuivahr’s shallow oceans. Del Kellum’s distillery—now managed by Shareen’s parents—processed the aromatic kelp into various types of ales and liquors, the most popular of which, due more to its gimmicky name than to its taste, was Primordial Ooze. The distillery also made a tongue-stripping substance called kirae, which the Ildirans loved. Shareen had tasted kirae—once—and Howard had been wise enough to decline. Her parents and grandfather insisted that Shareen was destined for much more important things than running a distillery. They kept pushing her, and she had to admit that she liked to be pushed.
As a former Speaker of the Roamer clans, Del Kellum could pull plenty of strings, and he had arranged for Shareen and Howard to head out to Fireheart Station, where they would apprentice under Kotto. No matter what the scientist assigned them, Shareen was sure she would learn something from it.
For the next several hours of the passage to Fireheart, Del slept in his seat, snoring loudly, while Shareen and Howard played games. Howard plied her with little-known facts about Fireheart Station, their output of power blocks, isotope-enriched metal films, exotic polymers, until the transfer ship’s pilot announced over the comm, “Arriving at the nebula’s outer gas-shock boundary. It’ll be bumpy, so strap in.”
Her grandfather snorted, woke up, and looked around. Ignoring the pilot’s advice, Shareen and Howard crowded against the nearest windowport.
The nebula’s high-flux newborn stars had pushed the surrounding dust outward, leaving it piled up like the outer skin of a cocoon. As the ship passed through the denser ripples, Shareen and Howard held on through the turbulence, both grinning. Del pretended to be blasé about the trip, but Shareen knew that even her grandfather was intrigued. He had been here only twice before in his life.
When the transfer ship plowed through and emerged into the brighter gases beyond the gas-shock boundary, Shareen stared in awe at the drifting Roamer facilities, which were like islands scattered across a colorful sea. Unique isotope-processing factories gathered the highly ionized gases, sifting and sorting the swirl of exotic molecules.
Howard pointed at a pair of huge tankers drifting through the nebula, skimming gases with enormous sheets of collecting material. “There’s so much going on here.”
“Even more exciting than a kelp distillery, isn’t it?” Del teased.
Shareen’s eyes sparkled as she said, “Now this is a place where we can do something interesting.”