Space Stations

Hoshi stared through the scope for what she sensed was hours, as her legs began to cramp and the ache returned to every inch of her body. The chill air that swirled around her face set her teeth to chattering. Couldn't she coax more heat into the room? Later, perhaps. Too much to see to be interrupted.

She fixated on what were considered the constellations of autumn, as would be viewed from the middle north latitudes. Cassiopiea and Perseus. A curved line of stars that made up part of Perseus extended toward Auriga.

“Auriga the Charioteer,” Hoshi stated when she took in the large constellation. Auriga was the last of the autumn formations. The stars heralded the approach of winter.

Capella, a bright triple star on Auriga's chest glared hotly at her. Capella was sometimes called “The Goat,” and near it were a triangle of stars referred to as the kids. She noted several open clusters in the formation, each containing about a hundred stars and—

according to the readings on the telescope—sitting nearly three thousand light-years away. She could see them plainly when she made a few adjustments. The starlight was intoxicating.

“Auriga's Streetcar.” Named for the constellation this telescope was keyed to and for the shape of the station and the business Charles Yerkes had been famous for. “An appropriate name after all,” she decided. Auriga the Charioteer that beckoned winter.

Hoshi was well into the winter of her life.

She would have watched longer, had the ache in her joints not become a dull, persistent pain she could no longer ignore, had the cold not sunk in to become unbearable and forced her to replace her helmet, had the station not groaned and shuddered once more.

With a great sigh, she reluctantly edged away from the refractor and busied herself with removing the lenses from two of the smaller telescopes. Were she younger and stronger, she could have taken more this trip.

As she turned to leave, a small telescope on the opposite end of the observatory caught her notice. It looked much newer than everything else. Not an antique, it would be her last priority.

Hoshi patiently made her way back through the narrow gray tunnels and to her skimmer, carefully placing the treasures in her hold and retrieving thick silk padded slipcases that she intended to use for the largest lenses. She tried hard to thrust to the back of her mind the groaning of the station. It moved more this time, slipping in its orbit, causing her to curse her slow, old woman's body. The station hadn't days left, she knew now. It likely had only hours. And she would have to push herself to gain Yerkes' antique lenses and more.

A glance through the large refractor when she was again in the observatory. Auriga had moved, or rather, the Streetcar had moved significantly. Hoshi worked fast to remove the lenses, a task that should take two or more people, or that should take time and great care—she couldn't afford the time.

Somehow she handled the task. And with the room now at zero-g, and the lenses protected by the silk, she maneuvered them through the ghost-lit corridors. She would have taken one at a time, Hoshi had the patience for it. It would have been safer for the lenses, easier for her to deal with. But she handled the time limitations presented her, and she fought to keep from crying out as her fingers—clamped viselike around the edges of the slipcases—ached so terribly from age that they felt on fire.

“A few minutes more,” she told herself. “Just a few more.” Then she would be settled in her skimmer and heading toward her Takasago home on the coast, contacting several potential buyers and cherishing her look through the telescope, her oh-so-wonderful view of Auriga's goat and kids. What a story she would tell her grandson.

“No.” Her fingers opened in surprise, and she had to struggle to catch the slipcases as they floated upward. “No!” Looking out through the hatch window, Hiroshi could see the stars. But she couldn't see her ship.

Was she at the wrong bay? Had her aging mind took her down a different corridor and to the bays on the other side of the Streetcar? Had she…?

Hoshi froze, eyes locked onto a spot below a second-magnitude star. There was her skimmer, drifting free of the Streetcar. “How?” her gaze settled on the hatch door. She'd done nothing to release it, nothing to break the lock. “How is it possible?”

Turning and swallowing her fear, she summoned what speed she could and carried the lenses down one corridor and then the next, her helmet beam bouncing light off doorways and protrusions, sending shadows to eerily dancing. Her side burned from exertion by the time she reached the other bays and spied a sleek freighter. Someone else had made the trip to scavenge from the dying station. That someone had released her ship. There were no markings that she could see from this position. What nationality?