Free Her Scales Shine Like Music by Rajnar Vajra Page B

could quit RE, go back to school, and see if my Tara was still foolish enough to marry a—
    I noticed all eyes turning toward me.
    Oh. Everyone else had already thought it through. Part of me still floated, buoyed by visions of a brilliant future. Another part sank as I worked it out for myself, a three-step process.
    One: Before reaping our unjust rewards, we had to stake this claim, an immediate priority with a discovery of this magnitude. Otherwise, RE specialists might lack time enough to squeeze maximum value from the artifacts before … other interests arrive.
    Two: Global Council policy demanded a “Vigilant,” a person constantly remaining within seven hundred meters of a find until a title was officially registered. Some legal cheating by one of RE’s competitors, the Finnish-Japanese conglomerate Draaki Oyj, inspired this recent rule change. Draaki had exploited the original radio beacon dibs-on-this statute by burying inactivated beacons, thousands, on newly opened worlds wherever sites held a shred of financial promise. They’d let other companies do the actual work to find any goodies, and then activate the buried beacons to finalize a claim. This stunt had also inspired the adjacent-acres rider.
    Three, where our lightning stroke of mutual luck carried an edge of personal discomfort: Stardancer equals scouting ship. We weren’t expected or prepared to find anything this valuable. And it takes six people minimum, three to a shift, to safely operate a twistship of any size. No insulation yet discovered prevents the Twist from affecting onboard electronics. So constant attention and frequent recalibration is the price for making the light-speed limit irrelevant. By both Council and RE’s internal laws, eight people are the minimum crew for any twistship, two for backup.
    And who happened to be on top of our totem pole, in the sense of providing our crew the least support? Me.
    I did some mental calculations and didn’t savor the result. Even with the Twist’s temporal contraction paradox, it would take almost two weeks for Stardancer to return home, a few days at best for RE to dispatch a claim fleet, and another brace of weeks for those ships to arrive here. I’d be on my own here for at least a month …
    â€œCards,” I said quietly. “I realize the finger of fate is giving me the finger. Might I ask a question at this point?”
    â€œYou’ll never get a better chance, Poet.”
    â€œWhat if the … beings that left all their toys behind come back?”
    He grunted dismissively. “Not gonna happen. Look how the stuff is lying all, uh, helter-skelter. No orderly retreat here, kid—they were gettin’ the hell out, and didn’t plan on returning.”
    â€œUh-huh. Still, what if they do? And here’s something that strikes me as relevant: Why do you suppose they left in such a rush? Think that might be something for me to worry about?”
    He shook his head, more in sadness than anger. “Poet, you’re too damn sensitive and worry too much. We’ll set a cam or two aimed here, and if they do come back—which they won’t—just stay out of sight, keep an eye on ’em, and record everything they do.” He glanced again at the artifacts. “This site would have a … different kind of value in that case, and Global would send out a contact team and cut out ER, but we’d still get a fat payday. Got it? When your relief comes, we’ll have ’em park their shuttle far enough away so any ETs around won’t be likely to notice.”
    His words seemed as vacuous as empty space yet densely self-serving.
    â€œYou’re making a lot of assumptions,” I pointed out. “And, again, since you ignored the question, what made the ETs cut and run?”
    â€œCould be anything. Maybe they can’t breathe here, and something went wrong with their air supply. Maybe