No Place Like Home

by Dana Stabenow

  Not bad? Home had never looked so good. At first it was only a smooth, slender twinkle in the far distance, to the right of Luna and dimmed by her radiance. As we approached it filled the port, no longer a smooth column but a hexagonal cylinder. Against the blackness of space the rotating sides reflected the sun’s light in sharp, glittering bursts. The solar mirrors flared out from one end like the skirts of a girl at her first dance. Stabilizers, antennae dishes, handgrips, tool racks, and airlocks protruded from a surface already lumpy with an uneven layer of porous moon rock—LIMSH, courtesy of Colony Control, or Lunar Insulating Material for Space Habitats. Acronyms are Colony Control’s life.

  Home again, home again, jiggety jig. Home was Ellfive, and Ellfive was the first of two planned space colonies circling Lagrange Point Five, maintaining a stable orbit between the conflicting gravitational pulls of Terra, Luna, and Sol, traveling sixty degrees ahead of Luna as the third point of an equilateral triangle of which the other two points are Terra and Luna. I had to swallow hard. The sheer immensity of the mere idea of Ellfive, when I had time to think about it, made me feel the size of a gnat and about as significant. But home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in, gnats and all. I shifted in my seat, straining at the harness with my feet braced as if I could help push the ship in quicker.

  Crip warped in closer to the North Cap, its six-and-a-half-kilometer diameter dwarfing the Taylor, and the transmitter erupted with the traffic-alert whistle that sounded like the combined efforts of a stall signal on a Super Cub, air squeaking out of a balloon, fingernails scraping a blackboard, and teeth biting down on aluminum foil. Cockpit crews hate the whistle and curse me en masse for requiring its installation on every ship doing business with Ellfive, but it is a clamor impossible to ignore and so admirably serves its purpose. “Ahoy the Taylor, ahoy the Taylor, this is Ellfive Traffic Control.”

  “Go ahead, Control,” Ariadne responded from the navigator’s console.

  “Be advised, there is a hold on your docking, Taylor, I repeat, a hold on your docking. Proceed immediately to Transient Parking Area Number Three. You are cleared for approach and orbit.”

  Ariadne swore roundly and fluently, the harsh words sounding worse in her musical contralto, and looked around at Crip. “Ellfive Control, this is Captain Young, commanding the Taylor. What’s the problem, Bolly?” he said. Over his shoulder I watched him bring up the approach vectors for the Warehouse Ring on his screen and punch in the coordinates. The maneuvering thrusters kicked in, sounding like incoming mortar fire outside the hull. The old girl shuddered once in protest and began changing direction slowly. “I say again, Bolly,” Crip repeated, “what’s the problem? Are we early?”

  “No, you’re not early, Crip, the Thunderbird is late and the hangarlock won’t be free for at least another hour.”

  I could see Crip’s shoulders stiffen, but his voice remained calm. “Ellfive Control, are you aware that we have the boss on board?”

  The traffic controller’s voice was no less grim than his own. “We know, Crip. The Thunderbird’s captain insists she is unable to pull back from the lock for another hour.”

  In moments we were stationary, floating free in Park Three, still sixteen klicks from home. Crip hushed his mike and swiveled his seat to speak to me. His voice was polite and furious. “This is the third time in a month the Patrol has put me behind schedule, Star. Just what the hell is going on?”

  “It’s not your fault, Crip,” I said, fighting back my own annoyance. Annoyance does not sit comfortably on top of a hangover in zero gravity. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  He looked at me, frowning, but his crew was there so he said merely, “We could rustle up a solarscooter for you.”

  I shook my head and immediately regretted it. “I’ll ride in with you.” I sat back in that Iron Maiden of a jumpseat and tried to get comfortable.

  Unfortunately, the Taylor had not been built with my comfort in mind. The entire vehicle was 125 meters long and looked like the bishop piece from a chess game, with an aft pusher plate that was 57 meters across. We rode up front, with the freight modules between us and the fuel storage, and the freight modules and fuel storage and the pressure plate between us and ignition. It never felt like nearly enough of a safety margin. After Hiroshima and Pyongyang there wasn’t enough room in the universe to put between me and fission. Once they work the kinks out of the Martin-Bond deuterium-helium fusion nuclear pulse rocket, or figure out a way to make solar propulsion push a spaceship along at speeds comparable to that of an Express, I’m jumping the fission ship.

  Still, we were lucky to have the Express ships, and no one knew it better than I. When the War of the Worlds nonsense broke out in 1992 after Odysseus II intercepted the message from Betelgeuse, the absolute necessity of fielding some kind of force into space to act as a Terran reception committee became obvious to those of the most limited intelligence, and even to a few congressmen. Some bright soul remembered a plan by General Atomic in the late 1950s to build a ship powered by nuclear bombs that would put payloads larger by a factor of two or even three on Luna than would a chemical rocket of the same mass at launch. Congressional leaders in their infinite wisdom fell on Project Orion with loud hosannas and began to hurl funding at it in that odd but seemingly innate American conviction that enough money can cure anything. In the resulting rush to construction plans for padding crew seats were inexplicably lost.

  Two interminable hours and seventeen minutes later the Taylor docked, its nose nuzzling comfortably into the North Cap hangarlock. The little man inside my head had set aside his piledriver in favor of a meat tenderizer but was still thumping away with unflagging energy. I couldn’t unstrap fast enough. “Very nice trip, Crip, as always,” I said, turning to pull myself through the hatch.

  “Liar,” he said, his usual good humor restored with our safe arrival. “You didn’t think so.”

  “My stomach didn’t think so,” I protested. “Stop by for dinner next trip.” I could see a polite refusal forming and added, “I’ll get Charlie to whip up something.”

  He brightened perceptibly. “In that case I accept.”

  I slapped a bicep with one hand and jerked my forearm in his direction. He saluted smartly in return. I waved good-bye and pulled myself down into the payload bay, an immense cavern stripped to the essential shell, stark and bare and filled with freight strapped into nets, most of it mining equipment bound for the Trojans on the next SeaLandSpace freight tender. I didn’t mind the lack of passenger amenities; the Taylor was an Express-class cargo ship, not some posh TAVliner where flight attendants served saki nonstop from Tanegashima Spaceport to Tranquility Base, discounts available for frequent flyers. And the truth was that if necessary I would have ridden a mass capsule home today.

  The polysteel diaphragm of the North Cap’s transitional hatch enclosed the Taylor’s bow, the atmosphere pressured up, and the cargo door dropped down slowly to become a ramp. I could see the arm of a Clark hoist floating outside, surrounded by a dozen waiting longshoremen in heavily padded overalls. I pulled myself down via the handholds and the three other passengers followed me out. One of them was a big dark man in a scruffy gray flightsuit too short for his arms and legs and too tight in the butt. He had yet to learn that you don’t use your legs in zerogee and he kept getting tangled up with himself and anything else that got in his way. It’s always a surprise to me how much one human being can fill up an entire cargo bay, if the cargo bay is on Ellfive and the human being is an Ellfive cheechako. He looked like he was headed for Neptune when one of the longshoremen finally took pity on him and took him in tow with a boathook.

  “Where the hell do they get these guys?” Jerry Green grumbled behind me. “I’ll bet that jerk’s never had on a p-suit in his life.” He sighed a deep, sad sigh. “It’s not like the old days, Star.”

  I agreed, hiding a grin. Jerry, an aerospace engineer at Daedalus Flight Service, had been on Ellfive for all of eighte
en months and was returning from his first R&R downstairs. He’d been quarantined at LEO Base for ten days for displaying cold symptoms at transfer, and the food at LEO Base had never been anything more than edible. Jerry, whose nature and mass were normally Dionysian in character, was today looking lean, hungry, and definitely unhappy. “Who is he, Jerry, do you know?”

  “New rent-a-cop, somebody said,” Jerry replied.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “What?”

  “It couldn’t be,” I said to myself.

  “Probably not,” Jerry said. “It couldn’t be what?”

  The zerogee cheechako being towed briskly into the hangar at the end of a boathook couldn’t possibly be the new security supervisor. Helen hadn’t found a replacement yet or she would have notified me, I assured myself, and then the lead longshoreman gave the all-clear. I forgot the cheechako and Jerry and grabbed handholds straight across the floor to the barrel lock. I pulled myself in one side and rolled out the other into the waiting arms of Simon and Charlie. Simon grabbed me by the nape of the neck, brought me right side up, and said deliberately in his basso profundo voice, “Good to see you again, Star.” We shook hands in formal greeting. It was about as formal as he got, but Simon always shook hands. “How was the trip?”

  “The usual.”

  Simon examined me closely. “You are not quite your usual bubbling and effervescent Valkyrie self, Star.”

  “Who is?” I said, annoyed.

  “Too much welcome?” Charlie asked, regarding me with a sapient eye.

  “Nine Rotary Club luncheons, twelve Chamber of Commerce dinners, fourteen pep rallies, and, so help me, a parade. With fireworks,” I added when Charlie snickered. “But that should be the last of them. Helen promised me no more goodwill tours before commissioning. Please God, let’s get down to where I can swallow.”

  Biography

  Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage and raised on 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and after having a grand old time working in the Prudhoe Bay oilfields on the North Slope of Alaska, making an obscene amount of money and going to Hawaii a lot, found it in writing.

  Her first crime fiction novel, A Cold Day for Murder, won an Edgar award, her first thriller, Blindfold Game, hit the New York Times bestseller list, and her twenty-eighth novel and nineteenth Kate Shugak novel, Restless in the Grave, will be released in February 2012.

  Find her on the web at stabenow.com.

  Bibliography

  Kate Shugak Mysteries

  A Cold Day for Murder

  A Fatal Thaw

  Dead in the Water

  A Cold-Blooded Business

  Play with Fire

  Blood Will Tell

  Breakup

  Killing Grounds

  Hunter’s Moon

  Midnight Come Again

  The Singing of the Dead

  A Fine and Bitter Snow

  A Grave Denied

  A Taint in the Blood

  A Deeper Sleep

  Whisper to the Blood

  A Night Too Dark

  Though Not Dead

  Restless in the Grave (2012)

  Liam Campbell Mysteries

  Fire and Ice

  So Sure of Death

  Nothing Gold Can Stay

  Better to Rest

  Star Svensdotter Series

  Second Star

  A Handful of Stars

  Red Planet Run

  Other Novels

  Blindfold Game

  Prepared for Rage

  Copyright

  If you downloaded this book from a filesharing network, either individually or as part of a larger torrent, the author has received no compensation. Please consider purchasing a legitimate copy. They are reasonably priced and available from all major outlets. Your author thanks you.

  This digital edition (v1.0) of “No Place Like Home” was published by Gere Donovan Press in 2011.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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