CHAPTER 10
A cheer rippled through the Arena, loud enough to interrupt their conversation despite the sparse attendance. Not that the attendance was surprising, considering that the Arena had nearly enough seating for the entire population of Aotea.
“Did you see that?” asked Medical Director Ilsa Madani. “Smooth!”
“Smooth indeed!” said Konami with genuine wonder. He was enjoying himself far more than he’d expected. It had been a while since he’d done anything that could credibly be described as “fun”.
“Shame that Eng is so far ahead that it probably won’t matter,” responded Madani.
He agreed. The engineering department’s team dominated the ship’s ironball league most seasons, and this one seemed no different. Most departments, like Konami’s constabulary, were too small to form their own team, so they joined up with another department or two. Engineer’s current opponent, Fab-Supp, was made up of players from the fabrication and supply departments. Only two of Konami’s constables were interested and talented enough to play ironball, so they joined the human resources and administration departments’ team. Konami recalled that it was rare for them to win a single game. He thought he ought to try and attend more games — or at least the games in which Maria and Owen played. Gotta support my deputies, even if they barely see the field.
He asked her about Medical’s team.
Madani gave the so-so gesture with her hand, explaining that they joined with the Science department, with middling success.
The buzzer sounded for the final break between periods.
He thanked her for inviting him.
“It’s my pleasure,” she replied. Madani spoke again just before Konami worried the silence was becoming awkward. “What do you think it’s going to be like? Samwise? I mean, a whole new world. And the first world we’ve seen, besides Earth, with an atmosphere to support life. At least some sort of life.”
“We’ll need oxygen masks, right?”
She explained that the gas mixture on Samwise wasn’t quite right, but that the geneticists were working on modifying the human genome to better adapt.
Konami successfully kept his eyes from glazing over at the technical details and nodded. “As to what it will be like, I suppose that will depend on what we make of it,” said Konami. He thought for a minute. “It will be big.”
“Big?”
“Yeah, big. Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“The Jovian moons. My parents were frontier doctors.”
“Frontier? But they’ve been settled for a century!”
“Sure, but they’re big too.” She laughed. “Like Samwise. Every time some ice prospector finds a new cache of volatiles, there’s a run to set up a new settlement.”
“Volatiles? What is this, the 20th century? Why not fusion?”
“Earthers…” She shook her head. “Sorry. Fusion reactors are tough to build, and they take time. Years — Jove-years, I mean. Volatiles are easy. I must’ve seen a dozen new towns on Callisto and Ganymede with my moms. It was always the same — get there first, burn the volatiles while you dig tunnels, plant the bloom farms in the melt, and charge the mineral prospectors for the right to dig in your claim.”
“What happens when the volatiles run out?”
“That’s only a worry if prospectors find some valuable mineral. It goes two ways — if no one finds a thing, everything is abandoned long before the volatiles run out. Or someone finds something. If it’s a big enough vein, then some investor will cough up the cash to build a fusion plant.”
“Exciting stuff.”
“How about you? Tell me about Earth.”
“Have you ever been?”
She shook her head. “Expensive journey, even for doctors. Plus, all those open spaces…” She shivered.
Konami raised his eyebrows. “Samwise is gonna have those big open spaces.”
“Yeah, I know,” she replied. “By then, I’ll be accustomed to it.”
“Accustomed? On a spaceship?”
She laughed, gesturing up and around the cylinder of Aotea. “There’s not a single chamber on Ganymede as big as one of the Cans.”
Konami hadn’t thought of it that way. “Did you ever go to the surface?”
“Occasionally. Just for fun, really… but it’s such a pain, suiting up. Kind of a rite of passage, unless you’re a prospector.”
The way she looked at him brought him back. Way back – he hadn’t been in a serious relationship since Earth, and not even recent Earth. More like a decade before. He felt an overwhelming longing, and it was gone in an instant.
“It will be different on Samwise,” he said. “Real sky — blue and violet, I think — not just black and stars.”
She smiled and put her hand on top of his. “I’m looking forward to seeing it.”