Space Stations

Settlers, Alonza thought; traitors to Earth was what many would call them. She had nothing against the scientists and specialists and workers who were trained for the terraforming Venus Project, who had been chosen to go there and who had proved their worth. But the people from the camp outside Tashkent were another matter. They abandoned their homes and their work and even gave up all of their credit, to go to the camp and wait for passage until a few more workers might be needed inside the domed settlements that were being raised on the still inhospitable surface of Venus. They were, most of them, malcontents willing to leave their own Nomarchies to gamble on getting a chance at making a new world and a new life for themselves. Maybe the Project needed such people, and perhaps the Council of Mukhtars that governed Earth's Nomarchies had been wise to allow such camps as a social safety valve, but Guardians had to keep order in the camps, and Alonza considered that a waste of their resources.

A door opened and a Guardian pilot in a black uniform entered the waiting area, followed by a man and a woman who wore pins of silver circles on their blue tunics, pins that such people were required to wear in Earthspace so that anyone seeing them would know at a glance what they were. Alonza looked away from the pair as the pilot saluted her.

“Major Lemaris,” he said, “how good of you to greet me. Congratulations on your recent promotion. I hear that it's well deserved.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Looking up at him, Alonza wondered if the man was only being polite or trying to suck up to her in the hope of gaining some future favor. Hard to tell, but it did him no harm either way.

“As soon as our charges are off the shuttlecraft, my crew and I will speed them on their way to their ship,” the man continued.

“I came here,” Alonza said, “to tell you that their trip has to be delayed. Your passengers will have to stay here, so get them into the lift and shoot them through the spoke to Level B and the lounge next to the assistant director's office. We'll keep them under guard there until we can allow them to board their transport.”

“There's thirty of them,” the pilot said. He glared at the man and woman with the silver pins, as if they were to blame for the delay. “Might be kind of crowded.”

“They shouldn't be there for more than ten to twenty hours,” Alonza murmured, “thirty at most. They're from a camp, so they know hardship.”

The pilot shrugged.

“Warn them that it'll be close to a g there,” she went on, “not the half-g they've got here in the hub.”

“I assume that we at least will be able to stay aboard our ship until our departure, since I know the Wheel's space is limited.” The man in the blue tunic had spoken; he was a small man, barely taller than Alonza, with short dark hair and brown almond-shaped eyes. His companion, a short dark-eyed woman with a cap of thick black hair, stared past Alonza, avoiding her gaze.

“Unfortunately, you can't go aboard,” Alonza replied, “because a few components in the dock have to be replaced before it's safe to ferry anybody to your ship.”

The man frowned, looking as though he did not believe her, not that it mattered whether he did or not. He and his companion were Habitat-dwellers, or Habbers as they were derisively called. Their ancestors had abandoned Earth centuries ago for the Associated Habitats, the homes they had made for themselves in space, and there were many who believed that, despite their appearance, the Habbers were no longer truly human, that their genetic engineering had far surpassed what Earth allowed among its people.

Habbers might have their uses; some of them worked with the scientists and specialists of the Venus Project, and having them ferry settlers from the camps to Venus was certainly a convenience. Changing the orbits of a few asteroids so that they would come nearer to Earth and could be more easily mined had been another service of the Habbers to the home world.

Alonza could grant all of that, but loathed the air of superiority that Habbers exuded, as if the resources they provided and the necessary tasks they voluntarily undertook for Earth's benefit were little more than crumbs thrown to beggars. She thought then of how the home world must seem to Habbers, with its flooded coastlines, melting ice caps, and an atmosphere that was still too thick with carbon dioxide six centuries after the Resource Wars. They probably thought of themselves as fortunate for having abandoned what they must see as a played-out world populated by deluded die-hards. Even these two Habber pilots had that look of superiority in their eyes, the calm steady gaze of people who seemed to lack any turbulent and upsetting emotions.

“Where are we to stay, then?” the female Habber asked.