Free Spin the Sky by Katy Stauber Page B

Genetically engineered to have the tenderest, most delicious meat in the solar system. Larry Vaquero was scrupulously honest with the original investors in the mad scheme that was Ithaca. He insisted they spin the colony at just the right gravity and got the oxygen levels just so. The man was fanatical about setting up the perfect conditions for the penultimate steak, down to electronically monitoring the pH of their water three times a day.
    Penelope basks in the reflected glow of Cesar’s admiration. They pass the time discussing herd genetics and the troubles of trace mineral deficiency and whether supplementing bovine food with fungal protein was really beneficial or just the latest fad.
    They are both pleasantly surprised to find another soul who knows and cares about these things. Obviously, Penelope takes her job as ranch woman seriously.
    “How is it you know so much about cows?” she asks.
    “Oh, I worked on a ranch and my old dad was crazy for cows,” he mutters, hoping she’ll assume he’d been an Earther ranch hand. She does.
    Cesar knows much from his father and also because his bouts of homesickness over the years tended to manifest in the compulsive reading of literature on space ranching. Fortunately, there wasn’t that much on the subject for him to read.
    Cesar watches two cowgirls round up the herd and move them through the gate to the next field for grazing while Penelope brags that they have so many now that they had to split the herd in two or else the combined weight of several thousand tons of beef on the hoof will interfere with the orbital’s rotation.
    “Well, we better get going,” sighs Penelope with regret. She’s just as happy talking steers and calves all day. “I’m meeting with a man from Earth in a little bit. He wants to start importing our leather again.”
    “They want to buy your leather and transport it down to the planet? That seems like a lot of work for something they could do themselves,” he remarks.
    “Yeah, I was surprised too,” replies Penelope.
    Cesar laughs, “Well, who can blame them? Everything is better up here. Unless they’ve recovered a whole lot from the last time I was down there, they don’t have anything to compare to Ithaca beef.”
    “When you’ve got a controlled environment and fine gene stock, it’s hard to go wrong,” Penelope allows.
    “I would still think the cost of transportation would make it too expensive,” muses Cesar.
    Penelope shakes her head. “Well, we’d process the beef here so the weight would be much less of an issue than sending down the whole cow. Also, they’ve come up with some new designs for ships that function like space blimps. They basically just float down to the planet, using almost no energy. Then they shoot them back up here again with that laser umbrella launcher thingy.”
    “Still not a ride I’d like to take,” says Cesar.
    Penelope agrees, “I know they say it’s safe, but I’d rather not find out in person.”
    Penelope tells him that the cowgirls move the herd each day to prevent overgrazing any of the fields that stretch around the orbital. The gates are set up to open automatically each day so they can move both herds at about the same time. Once they have all the cows through, they trigger the lock on the gate behind them.
    Penelope asks the girl with blond pigtails, “Shani, any progress at the mating pens?”
    “Nothing to report. And we already checked on the bulls, boss,” says the blond, shaking her head. “We’re going to go work on the gate locks in Section C. They’ve been slipping loose lately.”
    Shani leaves with a wink at Cesar. Cesar chuckles and Penelope rolls her eyes.
    “That girl is the biggest flirt alive,” she tells him.
    “No need to apologize,” replies Cesar with a self-deprecating grin. “I’m too old to read much into a girl’s wink. You need me to take anything up to the house?”
    She did.
    Penelope shows him the mulch she wants to haul up to