Wildcatter Read online

  The big man grunted again. “Any questions?”

  “Tell me about Cacafuego, sir.”

  Big smile. “I know nothing about Cacafuego—yet. That’s just Mighty Mite’s own name for a target we still have to choose. All new data on exoplanets is funneled through ISLA, which saves it up until the final day of the month and releases it in one super news flash at midnight. Wildcatter ships stand by in dock orbit, waiting for it. If there’s a decent lead they’re off and running. If not, they wait for next month.” Even bigger smile, even less convincing.

  Seth nodded as if he didn’t already know all that. The trick was to bribe someone to give you advance notice of next month’s release. Or even two months ahead. Better still: buy data that never did get turned in to ISLA. It would all depend on how much you were willing to pay.

  “If you do hire me, when do I embark?”

  “According to the schedule, a week ago.” Was that a deliberate slip, to make him overconfident? Or just a lie?

  “What gear do I bring?”

  “Your body and two kilos of anything you want. That’s it. No drugs or crap like that.”

  “How is my share paid out? Who calculates it?”

  A cloud-shadow of caution crossed JC’s face; he leaned forward on his desk and seemed to choose his words more carefully.

  “You get your share in Mighty Mite stock. We’re a publicly traded company, audited, regulated, the whole shit. One hundred thousand shares authorized and issued. Five hundred shares will be registered in your name prior to departure and held in escrow until you return. Mighty Mite will make or break on this trip. The banks hold a ten-billion first mortgage on the ship and more than that in non-convertible bonds. If you can shovel up some useful crap for us when you go downside, we’ll all be rich, and you’ll get your share. Everything’s aboveboard, no room for double dealing.”

  No? It wasn’t how the rich got rich you had to watch, it was how they stayed rich.

  “No more questions, sir.” He had several, but none were deal breakers, so he needn’t ask them. He was almost certain now that he had the job, but he wasn’t going to let his guard down until he boarded. And not then.

  “The first thing we must do is measure you for your EVA suits. How soon can you check in?”

  Seth shrugged, mouth dry, heart beating wildly. “I’m yours as soon as I’ve read over the contract.”

  “No affairs to settle?”

  “Nothing a couple of phone calls won’t fix.”

  JC pulled an “I am impressed” expression. “Give me an access code.”

  Seth gave him a random number. “47746.” He blinked and saw his com register a download.

  “That’s the offer and the contract terms. You have twenty-four hours, but I’d appreciate hearing sooner if you decide not to come. We have a coupla’ thousand other candidates on hold.”

  “I’m a fast reader, sir. I can do it outside, there?”

  “Of course.” Lecanard stood up, displaying that ugly, unconvincing smile again. “There’s nothing in there you won’t accept. I know a fanatic when I see one, and you’d sell your balls if that was part of the deal. Welcome aboard, Mr. Broderick. You’re a real find! Glad to have you.”

  He held out a hand to shake. Seth saw the crush coming and let it happen. It was bad. He didn’t have to fake his yelp of pain.

  One day he’d return that.

  But he walked out of JC’s office with his feet not touching the fancy carpet. He had won his lifelong ambition, a trip into the Big Nothing. He also had JC summed up as a bully, trickster, and big-time operator, likely a crook whenever he could get away with it. Hard and untrustworthy. A good man to have at your side, never behind your back.

  The receptionist had disappeared. The only other person in the reception area was a youngish blond guy, probably a herm. From the way his eyelids were moving, he was watching sports.

  Seth took a seat and called up the new document. The contract was shorter than he expected, because wildcatters basically sold themselves body and soul for the duration of a voyage, subject only to the ISLA’s General Regulations, better known as the GenRegs, and relevant Ship’s Rules. A copy of those was attached and contained no surprises that he could see. As he had expected, anything he discovered, invented, or created would belong to Mighty Mite, with the important exception of his prospector’s EVA log. When he had read everything he confirmed JC’s sig and Mighty Mite’s corporate seal, then sub-vocalized his own sig, and watched as it was verified. He copied the document to his life files back in the New Desert E-Vault.

  The blond herm must have been monitoring the Mighty Mite end, because he jumped up and came striding over, offering both hands and a huge grin.

  “Welcome, Seth Broderick! Jordan Spears, captain of Golden Hind.” He did not try to squeeze. “Fergawsake, I bin sitting there crapping bricks, terrified Old Ugly would turn you down.”

  Seth distrusted gushy offers of friendship. “Why would he?”

  Jordan took him by the triceps and led him to the door. “Because you’re so screaming good! You should have seen the rest—trolls, morons, and psychos. I am starving. You were the best by a light year, but there was a shortlist of about thirty, any of whom would have sufficed. Let’s go and eat, and you can meet the crew.”

  “Why would he not take the best?” Seth asked as they left Mite’s offices.

  Jordan smiled slyly. “Because you’ll be the only other full-time male. Our beloved leader may not want any arguments about his leadership.”

  The levitator shot them up to a rooftop restaurant. Seth blinked at the first human waiters and white tablecloths he had ever seen outside a com show. He could see for a hundred miles; buildings and mountains, the curve of the Earth. He was on top of the world.

  “This burger is on you?” he asked cautiously.

  Jordan laughed. “It’s on Mighty Mite, expense account. Table for five please, view of the sunset.” The moment they sat down the captain ordered drinks and then sat back expectantly. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  How good could anything feel? Life’s ambition on his first attempt? “There are no words for how it feels.”

  “Assuming you can sit there long enough to eat, what are you going to do to celebrate afterwards?”

  “I want to go down to a gym and utterly destroy a punch bag.”

  “I went out and got myself laid three times in an hour.”

  “You’re bragging.”

  “Sixty-five minutes, if you insist on accuracy. Want to try to better my record?”

  Oddly enough, no. Sex, and especially the sort of trade sex Jordan was suggesting, would just cheapen Seth’s sense of triumph. If he had a lover handy, that would be different. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  Seth wanted to know if this was the end of poverty. He had just gone on expense account for the first time in his life. For several years he would not need to worry about his next meal. After that he might be astronomically rich, or back to flat broke. Or dead, of course. One chance in three wasn’t too bad, and there were to be interesting side effects.

  “I see from Ship’s Rules that we’re going monkeys, not monks?”

  That won a wicked grin. “You’re asking a herm? You know our reputation. Besides, what else do people do? It’s the only universal recreation, rabbits in space… You don’t believe me?”

  “There’s another universal recreation,” Seth said, massaging his hand under the table. “A lot of people like to play power games.”

  “Some do,” Jordan admitted with a genuine-seeming grin. “Not you or me, of course, but we both know one who does. Yes, we’ll do the monkey business. Statistics show that it works best. If you try to ban sex, it just goes underground and people get ratty. The only way to shut it down completely is to feed us chillers, but de-sexed crews get depressed, mistake-prone, and even more quarrelsome than when they’re raunchy. Bed riding will be voluntary, of course, but chast
ity won’t make you popular. You have a moral problem?”

  A herm certainly would not. Herms were notoriously promiscuous. Herms needed to change over every few weeks, to avoid getting locked into one gender.

  “Far from it. Who settles the arguments? If JC and I both want the same woman, or two women start fighting over me, who flips the coin?”

  “I do. Lucky me. I don’t have anything much to do with running the ship or exploring the planet. My job is the crew. I have to keep us all happy. I am authorized to try analyzing, tranquilizing, and screwing.”

  Seth chuckled. “JC fancies himself as an athlete?”

  Jordan sipped his drink thoughtfully. “Maybe not. Two women, two herms, and two guys does sound like orgy week, but I think that one of the women is a bit of a prude and the other herm looks forty-ish, so we may be misjudging Old Ugly. He could have chosen better bimbos if that was what he wanted.” Jordan smiled. “You hold four tickets in the lottery. I have five.”

  “So what’s the rest of the talent like?”

  “You’ll meet them all in a few minutes. They’re on their way.” Jordan raised his glass for a toast. “Bon voyage and happy landings. May you become filthy rich and wallow in unheard of decadence all the rest of your days!”

  “Same to you.”

  Looking into those laughing blue eyes, Seth realized that he was already being assessed as a future partner and that Jordan Spears must make a good-looking woman when they changed. She might not be as flirty then as he was being at the moment, but one of Seth’s tickets looked like a sure winner.

  He took another sip of whatever was in his glass. It tasted of sunshine and smelled like lithe young woman. “Do gofers get as much action as captains?”

  “I wouldn’t bet against it,” Jordan said. “All cats are gray in the dark.”

  Day Minus 46

  to Day Minus 4

  Dreams of colonizing planets of other stars are just that, dreams, and must always remain so. For the price of one starship you could build a city at the bottom of the ocean or a skyscraper on Mars. The only cargo that can ever justify the cost of interstellar transport is information.

  Fonatelles, op. cit.

  Everything after that seemed like anticlimax. Yet time, which had crawled like a snail for months, suddenly went into hyperdrive.

  The following day the crew flew to Space City to begin final training, and JC joined them there two days later. The mockup of the ship’s living quarters was depressingly small, a claustrophobic line of windowless rooms no larger than a three-bedroom apartment. Seth had always been a solitary person, and the lack of privacy bothered him more than he had expected. He found himself due to share a room with First Officer Hanna Finn, a cuddly-looking redhead with a sharp sense of humor and an even sharper temper. She was the one that Jordan had called a prude, and she proved it the first night. There was nowhere to have a private chat with her ahead of time, a quiet sounding out of intentions. They would not be alone together until bedtime.

  So he sprayed his teeth very carefully, shaved, washed, prettied up, and went to tackle the problem. The two single beds stood parallel, half a meter apart, leaving little space in the room for anything else. He closed the door on the world and the galaxy. She was sitting on the edge of a bed, reading—reading a real paper book, too! Seth had never seen one outside a museum. It must have used up a fair part of her baggage allowance.

  He sat down on the other bed and leaned back against the wall.

  After a few moments she turned and frowned at him.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “I wasn’t staring. I was admiring.”

  “And hoping, I presume?”

  “Of course. But we can leave that until we know each other a lot better.”

  She snapped at him like a terrier. “No, it’s something we can settle right now. I never engage in promiscuous sex. Carnal relations should be restricted to traditional marriage. Forget your lecherous ideas. The beds will stay apart.”

  “That’s fine by me, ma’am,” he lied. It had been a long time. She was a striking woman and he had been hoping. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

  “I will never change my mind. And I always read my Bible before retiring.”

  “What’s your favorite bit?”

  The big green eyes registered cynical disbelief. “Matthew, Chapter 5. You know it?”

  “Oh, yes. Great stuff. I’m not sure I want to inherit the Earth though. I’m planning to earn it.”

  “Holy Scripture is not a fit subject for humor. Your ability to quote it isn’t by any chance related to the fact that I left this book here earlier and it happens to open to that page?”

  “Certainly not. My favorite is the bit in Paul’s e-pistle to the Carthaginians about faith, hope, and love. Love’s the greatest, he says.”

  “He didn’t mean that sort of love, and he was writing to the Corinthians, not the Carthaginians.”

  Seth sighed and sat up to remove his tee-shirt. “As long as you don’t do it aloud, I shan’t complain.” He preferred to sleep naked, but decided to leave his shorts on. Jordan had promised him four tickets to the lottery, but the first one he had drawn was not a winning number.

  * * *

  For the next five weeks the crew were kept frantically busy, spending hours every day in final training. Some of that had to be done elsewhere, so they were not entirely confined to the mockup, and could adjust to the cramped quarters gradually.

  Seth earned his license on the hydroponic and synthesizer systems, and trained on a simulator until he was qualified to pilot an Oryo 9 shuttle. He was taught how to use the cooking machines, the cleaning system, and the laundry. He had to attend a general course on emergency procedures, et cetera, et cetera.

  The end of the month came and ISLA’s report included no new life-bearing planets discovered, which was a relief, in that Golden Hind hadn’t missed anything. It was also a real concern. Accessible space was being mined out. Good prospects were becoming rare. The latest staking had been Munda Kmer, at 5,450 light years and almost thirty years’ round-trip time, although that had included time slip, which might or might not repeat on a later visit. Many wildcatters were revisiting closer worlds that had been explored several times before.

  Yet it was a real relief when news came that Golden Hind was ready for final trials. Next day they were hustled aboard a shuttle and blasted into orbit. For the three hours they needed to coast to docking point, they took turns at the port, watching Golden Hind grow and grow. Seth had seen plans, knew it would be shaped like a stubby carpet tack, with the discoid head being the ship itself and the shaft below containing the tachyon converter and the eight tokamaks that powered it. He had never guessed that it would be so big. Even Reese, who had done all this before and put on know-it-all airs, was too impressed to sneer much.

  * * *

  The reality of Golden Hind itself gave him mixed feelings. JC’s need for dominance, officially termed respect, was most obviously displayed in the sleeping arrangements. The commodore himself had a stateroom larger than the two other cabins put together. Three cabins, six beds. Hanna slyly referred to them as “our golden hindquarters.”

  Let the monkey business begin!

  Seth, lowest on the totem pole, was appointed to the despised 02:00 watch and informed that the duty roster would not be changed during the voyage. Every spare square centimeter aboard was piled high with equipment and supplies that must be moved to permanent storage, largely by hand, and much of the storage was down on the high-gravity levels. Guess who? The two space tugs made fast to the rim had just begun the long process of “winding up”, so for the first week or so he had only partial gravity to deal with. That helped, but a fifty-kilo crate still had fifty kilos of inertia, even in microgravity. It took real muscle to start it moving and just as much to stop it again.

  On the brighter side, he was assigned to share with dark-eyed Planetologist Maria Chang, a classic see-what-I-got-guys trophy: thi
ck black hair, sultry black eyes, and a slinky walk that made his glands tingle. At first sight of all the females aboard, a man would instinctively choose her.

  That first night, he retired early, which was understandable when he had to go to work at 02:00. He was awake when she entered. He sat up, bare-chested.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I’m not sorry. Come here.” He patted the edge of the bed.

  “Oh, no! You think just because I have big boobs I’m a pushover, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think any woman’s a pushover; but we have months or years ahead of us here, ma’am, and I do hope that some time in the future we’ll be lovers. Is that impossible?”

  She tossed her head. “Perhaps not some time, but this is now.”

  He patted the bed again. “Come here, then.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want a goodnight kiss. Just one little kiss, I swear.”

  “Sure! And then one little caress on my breast. And you remove my top. And so it goes. And then, bingo!”

  “Maria, I absolutely swear I just want one tiny little sisterly kiss.”

  She said, “Huh!” disbelievingly. But she did come and sit beside him, and he put a hand behind her head to guide her lips to his. He played fair, kept the other hand clenched. After the first minute she let his tongue in. After several more, she stroked his chest. So then he caressed her breast, she checked the state of his erection under the sheet—which was at warp nine, raring to go—so he removed her top. And so it went.

  He must have acquitted himself well, because when he came off duty he found the two beds pushed together and her ready to go again. This was space travel as the legends had it.

  * * *

  Time melted away. The critical end of the month was approaching, when ISLA would announce the next slate of candidate worlds discovered, if any. If they were ready, it would be up to JC and Mighty Mite’s board of directors to decide if any of them was promising enough to be chosen as Cacafuego, Hind’s destination. If none looked good enough, they would set the clock back to Day -30 and wait until the next month, or the next, or as long as it took. Still no other ships seemed ready to enter the race, but Hind’s good fortune could not last forever.