Space Stations

The stations must remain service-oriented facilities, to be expanded or decommissioned as we see fit, not become homes…

“Doesn't make much sense,” Annette whispered.

“What doesn't?”

“Him. Here.”

Dave Bijou didn't need to follow the slide of his wife's eyes to know who took up the first bench in the Earthers' fancy-new shuttle. The rest from Thromberg Station squeezed four together, despite the Earther crew's uncomprehending stares and their provision of only two safety restraints per seat. Elbow room was a not-yet-accepted luxury; companionship was more reassuring.

Only the old ones remembered when it had been otherwise, more particularly, the Sol-born, who'd come to the station thirty years ago.

Sammie would remember, Dave told himself, thinking of the man alone and silent, back to them all. Samuel Leland, former proprietor of Sammie's Tavern, Outward 5, Thromberg Station. Undisputed leader of that community and least likely to ever leave it. Forty years since dirtside, some claimed. Could have been longer. On-station since Thromberg powered up, most believed. Rumor said he'd been an educated, cultured businessman, one with connections and backers in plenty on Earth.

Hadn't mattered. The past wasn't currency worth spending on any station during the Quill Blockade, when everyone had been quarantined to prevent the spread of the pest to Earth and Sol System, even if no station had ever held a Quill. A liability was more like it, in an environment where pasts no longer carried shields of family, property, or place.

The survivors learned early to deal in the here and now.

For the same reason, the future hadn't been a popular topic for casual talk, given the lack of it. Then, suddenly, the universe changed. The Quill were no longer a threat. The blockade had been lifted! People could leave!

Those with somewhere to go.

Dave sighed at the memory. He and Annette had been among those betrayed by their pasts. They were both station-born, to immie parents; another meaningless legacy, since it turned out to be where you were born that mattered.

Thromberg Station might have rioted again, when this became painfully clear. It came close. His voice, Sammie's, and others, insisted on reason. Might have been ignored, Dave admitted to himself, but even the angriest of them quieted at the return of those who'd desperately raced to the new worlds, only to discover themselves unable to endure the reality of sky, moving air, and distance. Their shamed, exhausted relief to be within walls proved desire wasn't nearly enough.

The Earthers brought tests to oh-so-kindly weed out those unsuited to life dirtside.

Kindness. Dave didn't make the rude noise this called for, considerate of his seatmates.

Station folk—stationers, immies, 'siders alike—knew the motive behind this convenient

“kindness.” Those stranded these last twenty years deserved and received first immigration rights without question. But Earth and Sol System hadn't stayed sterile. A new generation waited impatiently to become colonists. The stations' relics would have to hurry or lose their chance.

So they'd lined up for the tests. Outsiders passed, those who'd fled the blockade around Sol System only to be exiled in turn to Thromberg's outer hull because the station feared to let them back inside, in case they carried Quill. Why else would Earth fire on defenseless civilian ships? 'Siders were used to living with horizons, those of their ships and the station herself. First of many ironies, since most 'siders weren't interested in life dirtside, preferring a return to the independence of space. The First Rounders passed, to no one's surprise, being those colonists preselected for experience outdoors and bloody determination. But while 'rounders might be young enough to tame a world, they were too old to populate it.

The rest? Stationers and immies born in that last generation, before the Earthers added sterilization drugs to food shipments with the foresight of hysteria, ran headfirst into the new blockade: most could never live outside a station's comforting walls. With a guilt no one mistook for generosity, Thromberg was officially given to those who now had to call it home forever.

Of course there was a catch. The stationers expected one. Perhaps they felt better knowing it.

The waves of immigration to the terraformed worlds would need the transit stations—all of them. To keep the stations which had survived, they would have to restore those which had not.

Starting with the most infamous—Hamilton Station.