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  Wildcatters were notorious for promiscuity. Sex, after all, was what humans did, the one entertainment that never palled, and they were shut up for years at a stretch with no news of Earth, no outside friends, nowhere to go. Not all of Hind’s crew were equally lecherous. Hanna was puritanical and absolutely refused to play. Reese tended to cheat, being predatory when male and picky when female.

  “That’s your decision, Doctor,” Seth said. “I do still hope to seduce you at least once before we get home.” He was lying. He had no such ambition. She was twenty years older than he was.

  “I admit I’ve been playing hard to get. Next time, I promise I’ll take pity on you. But we may have to descend to this demon planet together, remember, and I don’t think that such a dangerous situation is any place for a girl.” He batted his long eyelashes.

  It was true that a biologist normally accompanied a prospector downside, although only the prospector went outside. The bio stayed in the sealed, aseptic area of the shuttle. Somehow Reese staying in the comparative safety of Golden Hind had always been a more believable scenario. Now it seemed virtually certain, since Galactic had flagged Cacafuego as dangerous.

  “It may not be any place for a man, either.”

  “But you will be so much more important to the success of the expedition,” Reese said. “We can’t afford to have you driven crazy by unslaked lust.”

  Seth leaned both hands on the back of his chair. “The mission is the only thing that matters, Doctor. If you think you will perform better under stress as a man, then keep your dingle dangling by all means. Don’t worry about me. I have often gone months without being laid, I assure you.”

  “The Chinese would say that you need to conserve your yang for the difficult days ahead.” Reese stalked away. Two pink pills a day and a high-fat diet would soon turn them female again, but even that medical miracle could never make them desirable.

  * * *

  Seth went into the mess to clean up. It was longer than the control room and the absence of a central table made the curve of the floor more noticeable. It seemed smaller, though, because it was cluttered with comfortable chairs, fold-away tables, and recreational equipment. The floor and ceiling were currently displaying some arid Asian steppe with a camel train in the distance and snow-capped peaks beyond them. All these decorative routines were familiar by now; soon a troop of riders would start chasing gazelles along the stern wall.

  Apart from that, the room was still in the shambles left over from the celebration. This was where Seth spent his days: here, the galley beyond, and on the hydroponics deck. Galley, mess, control room, sleeping cabins, showers, gym; those had been the crew’s world for the last four hundred days. He also spent an hour a day exercising down on the 2-gee level, closer to the rim, where even running might break an ankle. He had been steadily popping pills to increase muscle and bone density until he could risk lifting weights down there now. Cacafuego’s gravity was predicted as 1.2 gee.

  Some law of nature decreed that the faster you traveled, the more boring the journey. Flying was less interesting than walking, and light-speed was the dullest transportation of all. For weeks the ship would drift in locator mode, seemingly motionless in infinite space, although in reality moving at huge velocity relative to almost anything else in the galaxy. Hanna had sent out unmanned supra-light-speed probes and scanned with dozens of instruments while everyone aboard fidgeted and fretted. Only when she, as navigator, had been satisfied that she had located another haven had she been willing to proceed. The jumps took no time at all, as far as human senses could measure. In one sense, they lasted negative years, for warping space also warped time.

  He began gathering cans, glasses, empty plates, and full plates. What was he supposed to do with champagne bottles out here, hundreds of light years from the nearest recycling depot? His duties aboard Golden Hind were basically everything that nobody else wanted to do. JC had warned him of that when he hired him, fifteen months ago. Seth couldn’t remember if he’d mentioned busboy.

  Day Minus 47

  046.12 Nothing in these Regulations or Ship’s Rules shall be interpreted as requiring any member of the ship’s complement to tolerate sexual harassment, or to engage in any form of sexual activity except voluntarily.

  General Regulations

  InterStellar Licensing Authority

  2375 edition

  Seth stepped out of the levitator lobby into Mighty Mite’s offices, a reception area the size of a tennis court, luxuriously paneled with what looked like real wood but certainly wasn’t. Huge, glaring pictures decorated the walls: galaxies a-twirling, bizarre landscapes from exotic worlds. None of them could relate to Mite itself, because the Golden Hind expedition was to be its first. Several doors might lead anywhere or nowhere; all were closed. The four young men sitting on couches around the walls were either his rivals for the prospector job or just decoration.

  He waded through the carpet to the receptionist, who glanced up with eyes glazed by boredom. Skinny was the latest affectation of female young and she looked as if she had not eaten for months. Limp blond hair hung to her waist, and a blood-red Florenian orchid grew on the side of her neck.

  “I’m Seth Broderick.”

  She corrected him. “You’re Number Twelve. Take a seat until your number is called.”

  He headed to an empty couch. The most interesting thing in sight was a sign above the receptionist’s desk reading: Day -47. Mighty Mite had still to finish hiring its crew, which was cutting it fine if it hoped to launch in a mere month and a half. The cost of building and outfitting a starship was literally astronomical, but if pressure from the creditors was forcing the pace, that would not reduce the risk any. Has anyone seen the first aid kit?

  Without another glance at the opposition, he folded his hands on his lap, closed his eyes, and leaned back to seem relaxed. He had detected Mighty Mite playing mind games before, so he had no doubts that he was being observed; perhaps his heartbeat was being monitored. He had already noted that three of the four were sitting with eyes closed, lids flickering as they either read or watched some display visible only to them. The fourth was in the lotus position, which was definitely overdoing the icicle imitation.

  There had been hundreds of applications, of course, perhaps thousands. He had endured three previous interviews and four medicals, each more thorough than the last, and now Mite had flown him to head office in La Paz to meet the great man himself. If JC Lecanard wasn’t ready to make his decision by now, he was probably too inefficient ever to get his fogging ship off the fogging ground. Still twelve candidates with only forty-seven days left until launch? The presence of the others kept up the pressure on Seth, but some or even all of those four might be local actors brought in to play the part of additional candidates. They would be cheaper than plane tickets to Bolivia.

  Three of the other candidates, or actors, were wearing formal suits, with calf-length pants, flared coats, and hats with feathers in them, as if they were bankers or lawyers. One of them was almost certainly a herm, although it was always hard to be sure. Lotus was dressed like Seth, in tank top, shorts, and sandals. That was all a guy ever needed these days, as long as he remembered to take a weekly sun block pill. Sun block pills were another exoplanet discovery.

  “Number Fourteen,” said the receptionist.

  Seth opened his eyes. A door stood open. The possible herm rose, crossed the room, and disappeared. His calf muscles were impressive, but his hips were not true male.

  Everyone went back to what they were doing, except Lotus, who hadn’t reacted at all. No one had shown surprise at the number called, which either indicated that they already knew that the order was irrelevant, or else was a test to see if Seth could be rattled.

  He closed his eyes again and sub-vocalized the code to check into ISLA’s status page. It showed near-Earth space remaining quiet. Golden Hind was still in assembly orbit, together with two new keels, presently unnamed. Galactic had four in refit: Bolivar, Co
urageous, De Soto, and Magellan. Indra also had four: Ganesha, Krishna, Shiva, and Rama; but Indra was currently fully engaged in developing its world of Benares and would not be competing. Three of Bonanza’s ships were due in from the Sagittarius sector within days: Canopus, Polaris, and Sirius. They would need time to refit.

  So if a good planetary prospect was reported in the next couple of months, Mighty Mite might not face any significant competition for it.

  After about twenty minutes the door opened again. Candidate Fourteen stalked across to the outer door, his face expressionless.

  “Number Twelve,” Anorexia said. None of the others squawked about having been there longer.

  Seth rose and went to meet his destiny.

  The CEO’s office was even larger, the carpet thicker, and windows forming two sides displayed a magnificent view of a sandy beach with surf rolling in and palm trees waving their fronds about. Considering that Mite’s HQ was on the forty-second floor, in the middle of one of the world’s largest cities, which was itself 3,500 meters above traditional sea level, Seth was disinclined to believe that the scene was real. Besides, it would be centuries before sea level stabilized enough for mature beaches like that to form again.

  JC was standing behind a desk composed of a slab of black granite floating in the air with no visible support. Was that symbolic of Mighty Mite’s finances? He was dressed in a formal suit of white starsilk with a matching hat and a large black feather. He had large black-hairy forearms and was bigger than Seth had expected from his vid appearance.

  He spoke his name, reaching a meaty hand across the desk to shake.

  Seth spoke his, adding, “sir.” Neither tried to crush fingers.

  He was told to take a seat. He had a choice of one. Some hugely padded armchairs off in a corner were doubtless for informal chatting, but he didn’t rank those.

  On the far side of the desk, JC crossed his meaty legs and studied him for a minute or two. Seth studied him right back, noticing JC taking note of his arms and shoulders. Perhaps he should have worn long sleeves and long pants; in pink.

  “Your resume is impressive, Broderick.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Why do you want to venture into the Big Nothing, as we spacers call it?”

  “To get rich.”

  “This will be a one-ship expedition. You know how risky those are.”

  “Yes, sir.” On a ship-by-ship comparison, they weren’t much riskier than fleet expeditions, but Seth was not going to argue with the Great Man if he said the moon was made of cheese.

  “Your chances of surviving would be better if you signed up for a tour in downside duty on a development world, where the risks are known.”

  “Working for wages.”

  “Do you know the odds on a prospector surviving a first landing on a virgin world?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You think you can operate coherently with that kind of risk hanging over you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  JC shrugged. “We’re a start-up. You’d reduce your risk if you went wildcatting with Galactic or one of the other multinationals.”

  “Still for wages.”

  “Good wages.”

  Why waste time like this? Why not just tell him he was hired or kick his butt out the door? “Sir, I told you wrong. I don’t want to be rich. I want to be filthy, flaming, fucking, disgusting rich. I want to be as rich as Drake when he took the treasure ship. You advertised a piece of the action.”

  “One half of one percent.”

  Seth managed to frown. “I was hoping for a full one percent.” In fact a half was astonishing; he’d dreaded being offered a tenth of that. Risks had to offer worthwhile prizes.

  JC shook his massive head. The feather waved. “Eighty-five percent for the sponsors, fifteen divided among the crew: five percent for me, three for the captain, and so on, down to the prospector, one half. That’s still enough to make you a billionaire if we find anything worthwhile.”

  Seth shrugged and said, “That would do to start with.”

  “True, true! Old Mathewson used to brag that he’d built Galactic Inc. on one bucket of mud.”

  Seth smiled and nodded. Everyone knew that story.

  The big man laughed. “He was lying! He brought back forty-three sealed vials of mud, dirt, water, scum, plant material, and pickled fauna. Forty contained nothing of any interest whatsoever. It was the forty-first vial that turned up the antimalarzine bacillus. Galactic was built on the profits from antimalarzine.”

  Seth tried to look impressed, but he’d known that, too, though. He had been working up to this day for more than half his life.

  JC adjusted a pile of antique-style papers. “There are safer ways to get even filthy rich.”

  “I don’t want safer, I want richer. We had a family legend about an ancestor who was a wildcatter when that meant someone who looked for oil. He struck it big and his descendants lost it all.”

  That drew a flash of interest.

  “I’ve heard that before from people in the business. And ‘prospectors’, too—men who used to stake gold mines. Tell me more about yourself.”

  JC must have viewed at least three files of Seth telling about himself, plus his colonoscopy in living color.

  “I was born on a farm in the New Desert.” The rain had gone, the aquifers dried up, the soil blown away, and the temperature reached fifty degrees Celsius by midmorning, when the power went off. “When I was three my parents gave up the struggle and moved into town.” City life had been even worse. He didn’t say more about his parents—his father had worked a pedicab and died of a mugging when Seth was twelve. His mother had taken in laundry, succumbed to breast cancer three years later. The sister he had tried to raise had died of leukemia. When he reached his enrolment in NWTU, the big man barked a sudden question.

  “Who paid for that?”

  “I won a boxing scholarship.”

  “I understood that boxing was outlawed about the same time as gladiator shows.”

  Seth granted him a fake smile. “It’s known as ‘pugilistics’ now and we fake the punches.” Officially they did.

  “You must have done well, to stay there four years.”

  “I was lucky. A lot of my opponents were very skilled at faking comas.”

  This time he got what looked like a real smile.

  JC consulted the top sheet. “Astronomy, physics, sky-diving, karate, bungee jumping, gym, two medals in weight lifting, three in pugilistics as a lightweight, three more when you switched to middleweight, survival both tropical and arctic, hydroponics, domestic science, biology, organic chemistry, exogeology, exobiology, wrestling, pilot’s license, history of space travel … on and on. You never completed a degree.”

  “I hiked from school to school, taking courses from the best instructors—anything that might help me get into space, sir. I never failed a course. Prospectors need to be smart, tough, and fearless. I am smart, tough, and fearless. Plus I know a bit of everything in a pinch.”

  JC grunted. He was good, still giving nothing away. He would spring his traps when he was ready.

  “I’m not allowed to ask you this, but I will. How’s your sex life?”

  “I’m straight,” Seth said. “I avoid entanglements is all. I’ve wanted to get into space longer than I’ve wanted to get into women. I long ago decided I would never say, ‘Bye, honey, look after the kids, see you in ten years.’ I’m promiscuous when I get the chance.”

  “Never gay?”

  “You’re born with that,” Seth said cautiously, “or not. I wasn’t, but if I was with guys I liked and the nearest woman was a light year away, then I might get drunk enough. I don’t know.”

  The big man’s nod acknowledged a slick answer. “Fair enough. I’ll be going along on Golden Hind, plus a crew of five. I wanted five herms, but there aren’t enough good ones around. I’ve put together a first class crew of two women and two herms.”

  “I’ve had good fun wi
th herms, sir. No prejudice.”

  “I still need a prospector. If I pick you, then you and I will be the only true males aboard. I don’t want to have to fake a coma very often.”

  Wouldn’t be hard to give him a real one. Seth judged that he could spot JC Lecanard a baseball bat and still take him in thirty seconds. But if JC fancied himself as stud male among five women or part-time-women, then pink might have been a very good idea.

  “I expect you’ve gotten hold of my police record.”

  “That would be illegal.”

  “So?”

  “It’s clean except for a minor incident eight years ago. The court accepted your plea of self-defense.”

  “Which it was.” Two muggers, armed with a knife and a shotgun. He’d knocked them both down and disarmed them, but one had claimed brain damage.

  “You!” JC roared suddenly, “Are a fucking braggart, too fucking good to be true! I think half of this resume is bullshit. Get your ass out of here and stop wasting my time!”

  His bluster impressed Seth no more than his palatial office. Big feathers make big birds.

  “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  “Your next question, sir. You didn’t fly me all the way here to throw me out like that.”

  JC went back to the steady stare trial for a full minute. “It won’t be fucking romantic, you know. Years of utter boredom, like time in jail. You’ll be the gofer, bottom of the ladder. You do the housework, because we can’t afford the fancy robots the majors take. You’ll have machines to do the cooking, but you’ll have to wait on table, load the dishwasher, pick up the laundry, clean the showers, tend the hydroponics. Are you man enough to be gardener and cabin boy, Seth Broderick?”

  “Yes, sir.” They knew from his resume all the things he’d done to pay for his education. They knew that even now he was a janitor by day, a bouncer by night, and taking a course in Advanced IT on time off.