He grinned. “Yes.”
“Lots?”
“Lots,” he said with relish.
“Enough to justify construction of a mining colony?”
“Really, Star,” he complained as Helen stared at me with wounded dignity. “This lack of faith in our given word is upsetting both of us. More than enough.”
I looked the two of them over carefully. They stared back, their eyes wide with innocence. I gave a mental shrug. “Okay. Question number two. Who is picking up the tab for this little expedition?”
“Why, Ellfive is, of course,” Helen said, as if that fact was self-evident.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And the outstanding debt Ellfive owes the American Alliance? Don’t you think the Alliance might kick a little at having to stand in line?”
Frank rubbed one ear and exchanged glances with Helen.
“Well, if they get too uppity we can always get Archy to trigger the beacon in Heinlein Park.”
“Frank,” I said, “that’s no beacon in Heinlein Park.”
He grinned. “You know that’s no beacon, and I know that’s no beacon, and Helen knows that’s no beacon—”
“But,” the three of us said together, “the American Alliance doesn’t know that’s no beacon in Heinlein Park!”
· · ·
Charlie, Simon, and Caleb were waiting in my office, passing the time by passing around the last bottle of my Christmas Glenlivet.
“Not a bad speech, Star,” Simon said. “Nice and short. I like short in a speech.”
“You overwhelm me, Simon,” I said, rescuing the bottle from Caleb and pouring out the last two fingers.
“Iambic pentameter’ll do it every time,” Caleb said.
I toasted him silently and drank.
“We’ve all been working so long for this day,” Charlie said with a sigh, setting down her empty glass. There was a deep-seated grief in my sister’s face that had not been there before. “We pulled it off, Luddites and Alliance Congress and Space Patrol notwithstanding. So why does it feel like such an anticlimax?”
I set my glass down next to Charlie’s, on the new mayor’s desk, with great care. I smiled at the three of them.
“I’m outbound for Ceres on the Ted Taylor Express,” I said. “Who else wants to come?”
Excerpt
Now available as an e-book, Dana Stabenow’s A Handful of Stars is the second Star Svensdotter novel.
A Handful of Stars
THE CAPTAIN SPAT OUT A HANK OF MY HAIR and swore. “Star, either you tie up that mess or I take a knife to it here and now.”
“I’m sorry, Crip,” I said meekly. He was right. The cockpit was a small one and crowded enough with crew and controls and backseat drivers as it was. “Does anyone have a piece of string?”
“With all the zerogee traveling you do I don’t know why you don’t just shave it off.” He rubbed a hand over his own smooth scalp and resettled his headset. “Where the hell’s my checklist?”
“Move to parking orbit checklist, Captain,” the navigator said. She handed his copy to him and a roll of gray tape to me. I gathered my hair into a hasty braid and wound a piece of the gray tape around the end of it.
“Why don’t you strap down in your cabin, Star?” Crip said, peering through one of two tiny forward ports. “Ellfive Traffic Control, Hokuwa’a, radio check, one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one.”
“Hokuwa’a, Terranova Traffic Control, it’s Terranova now, Crip, how many times do I have to tell you? Your radio check is five by. Stand by for the mayor of Terranova.”
Crip glanced back at me and rolled his eyes. “Standing by. On the intercom, Denise.”
“Aye, Captain, on the intercom.”
We waited. There was a click and a low buzz. Someone muttered a curse down the channel. The static cleared, and sounding like fingernails scraping a blackboard, Mayor Panati’s voice bounced off the bulkhead all the way downship from bridge to crew quarters to galley to freight to pressure plate and back again. Crip lunged for the volume control and Panati’s voice dropped to a more endurable level. I settled back and resigned myself to the standard hearts and flowers farewell. After a few unintelligible whispers, Panati’s voice said, “Is Star Svensdotter in the audience?”
“I am, Your Honor.”
“Good. Now then, where’d I—oh, thanks.” He cleared his throat. He was still squeaky, like someone rubbing a balloon. “Members of the First Terranovan Mining Expedition, this is Mayor Charles Panati of the independent nation of Terranova speaking.” He paused. “Think about those words for a moment. Mining expedition. Independent nation. Sound good, don’t they? Well, keep in mind that there would be no mining expedition and only an American Alliance colony known as Ellfive were it not for the courage and determination of one woman. I’m sure you know of whom I speak. I’d bet big money she’s riding in the jumpseat behind Crip right now because she’s convinced he can’t get the Hokuwa’a out of orbit without her.”
Denise gave Crip a swift, sidelong glance. I glared at the back of his head and dared him silently to laugh.
“Well, maybe she’s right,” Panati went on. “Star Svensdotter led Ellfive to freedom in the One-Day Revolution, and on to independent nationhood as Terranova.”
Sort of, and kind of from behind.
“Star Svensdotter opened a dialogue with the first extraterrestrial visitors to our solar system.”
If you can call a one-way, one-time tete-a-tete a dialogue.
“Star Svensdotter oversaw the construction of the first self-supporting, self-governing space colony in human history, which made all of the foregoing possible.”
I did do that.
“And now Star Svensdotter is leading a mining expedition to the Asteroid Belt in search of those elemental materials so desperately needed here at Terranova for the completion of construction of Island Two. Terranova will never be able to repay Star Svensdotter all that we owe her. Of course we are grateful, but gratitude alone doesn’t balance the books. Star, so you know that wherever you go and whatever you do, you will always have a home on Terranova, the Habitat Assembly has deeded to you title in perpetuity to the house and accompanying plot of land in the Rock Candy Mountain foothills, heretofore occupied by the director of construction of Lagrange Five Space Habitat, Island One. It will be maintained by the Terranova Assembly against the happy day of your return. And the heartfelt thanks of every Terranovan goes with it.”
I was dumb. Without looking Crip reached a hand around behind him and smacked my leg, hard. I jerked and stammered something into my headset, God knows what. It must have been all right because Panati sounded satisfied.
“You are very welcome. Now then. To Star and to her crew at the beginning of this momentous voyage, we bid farewell and bon voyage. But it has been said before me, and better said at that.” Panati cleared his throat yet again and his voice deepened. “ ‘A health to the man on trail this night. May his grub hold out. May his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire.’ ”
The last echoes of Jack London’s Klondike toast echoed throughout the ship. I had a lump in my throat the size of a cantaloupe.
“Cleared for separation, Hokuwa’a,” Terranova Traffic Control said in a low voice, “and safe journey, Crip.”
“Roger that, Terranova,” Crip said gruffly, “and thanks, Bolly. Navigator, you have comm.”
“Aye, Captain, I have comm.”
About the Author
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 science fiction novel, Second Star, sank without a trace, 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-eig
hth novel and nineteenth Kate Shugak novel, Restless in the Grave, comes out in February 2012.
Find her on the web at stabenow.com.
Also by Dana Stabenow
Star Svensdotter
Second Star
A Handful of Stars
Red Planet Run
Liam Campbell Mysteries
Fire and Ice
So Sure of Death
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Better to Rest
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
Others
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.
Second Star was first published by Ace in 1991. This digital edition (v1.0) was published by Gere Donovan Press in 2011.
Copyright © 1991 by Dana Stabenow.
Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to reprint materials from the following sources:
The quote opening Chapter 2 is from Time Enough for Love, © 1973 by Robert A. Heinlein, and is used by permission of the Putnam Publishing Group.
The quote opening Chapter 4 is from Disturbing the Universe, by Freeman Dyson, and is used by permission of the author.
The quote opening Chapter 8 is from Broca’s Brain, © 1979 by Carl Sagan, and is used by permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Errata
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Please email [email protected], stating the name of the ebook, the type of device you are reading it on, the version (see copyright page) and the details of the error.
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