Free Red Planet Run by Dana Stabenow Page A

progressed, the conversation the usual mixture of business and pleasure, SOP when you live where you work and your work is your life. “We’ve received an inquiry from a group of bioengineers on Terra, Star,” Ari reported. “They want to commission a World, and Archy says their credit rating—”
    “A-one, boss!” chirped my communit. You couldn’t beat Archy away from a party with a stick. It was, he had informed me once, an ideal opportunity to brush up on his social skills. It certainly increased his vocabulary.
    “—is A-one,” Ari repeated patiently.
    “Do I hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere?”
    He nodded. “They want their world to be absolutely antiseptic when they move in. No possibility of bacteriological contamination from anyone or anything but what they bring on board themselves.”
    “Are we having fun yet?” I said. “Neatniks of Terra, unite and move off-planet. Can we do it?”
    We argued about it for a while, and decided we could do it but we wouldn’t. “Sterile suiting for everybody who works inside? Decontam for every tool? Forget it,” Maggie said.
    Charlie snuck up behind me and cooed in my ear. “And how are we all? Everybody have enough food? John, you need a refill. Star, get him a refill.”
    A blunt instrument. A big, heavy, blunt instrument. No Outpost jury would ever convict. I got up and refilled John’s drink. He thanked me profusely, until Simon’s elbow in his ribs shut him up.
    “Dear,” Mother said, “we’re having some difficulty with the miners on 6666Lucifer. They say they’ve found evidence of some kind of pre-disintegration religious icons, and if they let us come down for surveying and core sampling we’ll be desecrating a shrine. They’re saying they’ll shoot on sight.”
    “Infidels beware,” Simon said cheerfully.
    Crip said, “We’re getting the same kind of noise from the Save the Rocks League.”
    I caught sight of the expressions on the twins’ faces, a kind of dreamy expectation, and wondered apprehensively what it meant.
    Ari groaned. “Oh Christ, what’re they up to now?”
    “Not Christ, but the local equivalent. Brother Moses.” Crip scratched his shaved head. “As near as I can figure, he’s kind of absorbed the Promethean sect into his movement.”
    “What the hell is a Promethean sect when it’s at home?”
    “What is this crap?” I demanded. “Prometheus doesn’t exist any longer, if it ever did. All we’ve got to show for it or them, or whatever the hell used to be in this orbit, are the remnants of a fuel storage facility, a couple of debatable artifacts that might once have been used to hold somebody’s soup, maybe, and seventeen different theories about how the Asteroid Belt might once have been a planet.” I avoided looking at Helen, who was being remarkably reticent and self-effacing. “We haven’t uncovered any graven images so far as I know, let alone any evidence of organized religion.”
    Crip shrugged. “Tell that to the guys on Lucifer. All I know is Brother Moses is starting to figure Promethean deities prominently in his revival meetings.”
    “What Promethean deities!” From the corner of my eye I saw the twins become even more Sphinx-like.
    Charlie joined us, pushing in between Simon and me, and in the process shoving me up against John and very nearly into his chicken adobo.
    Speech trembled on the tip of my tongue but Crip beat me to it. “This isn’t World business,” he said, one wary eye on Charlie and the other on me, “but while we’re all here—”
    “Yes?” I said, my spine straight, my words clipped. “What is it?”
    “We’re getting crowded, Star. Outpost needs more room.”
    “Like how much more room?”
    He looked at Simon, and Simon nodded. “I’d say go for broke and build on a second wheel, connected by axle to the first.”
    “The original wheel’s getting a little shabby, too,” Simon added. “If we’re going to expand, we might as well do some R&M to the