Spinneret

Matro Rodriguez snarled an old Nahuatl curse Perez had often heard him use.

"Farming. Farming.' We came all this way just to be put to work in fields like migrants?"

"I told you not to expect too much," Perez said with a shrug. "If you'd ever been in the Army, you would know that all recruiters lie through their teeth."

"We might as well be in the Army. Or haven't you looked at me list of rules yet?"

"I looked at it. What did you expect—that we would be the new Pilgrims here, get to do anything we want?"

Rodriguez didn't seem to be listening. "Did you notice how practically everyone in Ceres is Hispanic? And how they've got us three to a house? I was behind one of the middle-class science types in line this afternoon—he got a house all to himself in Unie."

"Well, at least we've got our own lake."

"I'm overjoyed," Rodriguez said sourly. "The Anglos'll probably sit around it while we dig irrigation ditches to the fields."

"You're getting yourself worked up for nothing. All right, so they're treating us like peons—now. But there are a lot more colonists than there are soldiers, and I don't suppose the Anglos will be thrilled by Army rules for long either. As long as we stick together we can make this place what they promised us it would be."

Rodriguez gave him a hard look. "You were always a pretty good talker, weren't you? I noticed you didn't say any of this at the meeting when they ordered us into the fields."

"Of course not—we've all got to eat, haven't we? But the time will come, Matro, and when it does we'll be the ones bargaining from strength. Trust me."

The other snorted. "Sure. But I won't believe it until it happens. Buenos noches."

Lengthening his stride, he disappeared into the gloom.

Perez watched him go, feeling his lip curl slightly. He and Rodriguez had been friends since their high school days in Texas, and he'd yet to see the other use his head while his mouth and fists were still operable. Chances were good he'd go off half-cocked this time, too, and get himself in a lot of trouble. If that happened …

well, Perez would just have to do what he could to help. It was a pain, but Rodriguez was people, and Perez could hardly claim to be out to save the world if he weren't out to save people, too.

Lost in conversation and musings, he'd overshot his turnoff. Retracing his steps, he headed down the dimly lit lane toward his new home, hoping his roommates weren't pla

Pulling the sheet up to her chin, Carmen Olivero turned off her light with a tired sigh. Only one day on Astra, she thought wryly, and already I'm a week behind. A

new record. By all rights, she knew, she ought to still be at the Unie admin complex, where the rest of the organizational staff was busy with final duty rosters and equipment/supply check-in. The latter work had been done once, of course, when the ships were being loaded, but it all had to be done over to check for breakage and such during the voyage. But Colonel Meredith had left specific orders for her group to be available at 0700, and she knew better than to scrimp on sleep if she wanted to be at least halfway competent at her job. Especially after undergoing this new space-age equivalent of jet lag.

She closed her eyes, but her mind seemed to still be in high gear. Inventory lists and storage assignments hovered in front of her eyes, threatening her with an avalanche of paper. She'd been doing this sort of work for fifteen years now, but nothing in her experience had prepared her for the sheer complexity of this job.

Ten thousand colonists and military people required a tot of supplies, and aside from water the local environment provided practically zilch. And it was a long, long way to Earth for anything they ran out of.

She fought it for ten minutes before finally tossing back the sheet and padding barefoot to the kitchen. The individual food supplies hadn't yet been distributed to the various houses, but the plumbing and microwave worked and she always carried a few packets of instant hot chocolate in her personal luggage. A few minutes later she was sitting by the kitchen window with the steaming mug, listening to the faint voices and machinery sounds from the direction of the docks.

/ wonder when I'll start missing Fort Dix, she wondered. Not that the base or even the rest of Jersey had held that great an attraction for her; but after a lifetime of periodic uprootings, she knew full well that the pangs of homesickness would eventually come. In her Army brat days the agony had sometimes seemed to be more than she could handle, enhanced as it was by the loss of school and friends; now, at the ripe old age of thirty-six, she knew the reaction would be no more than a dull haze over her life for a few days. Still, it was never much fun. One of these days, she told herself, sipping cautiously, I'm going to have to give up this nonsense and settle down somewhere for good. Maybe when we've got Astra on its feet … or when we throw in the towel and all go home. Whichever comes first.

Somehow, neither option seemed all that thrilling at the moment. Never get philosophical at two in the morning, she thought, quoting Number Twelve of her personal list of rules, and dismissed the subject. Draining her cup, she rinsed it out and put it into the sink, hoping in passing that her new roommate wouldn't turn out to be a cleanliness fanatic. Back in bed, she found her brain had cut back to idle—far enough down for her usual sleep routine to be effective. Snuggling up to her pillow, she closed her eyes. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof, she quoted to herself, and turned loose the future to handle its own affairs. Two minutes later she was fast asleep.

Chapter 2

" … and here are the inventory lists from Crosse," Major Thomas Brown said, laying one last thickness of printout on Colonel Meredith's desk. "Everything's out of the Aurora now, and the Pathfinder's last load is on its way down. Most of the stuff waiting to be sorted is bulk food, clothing, and fertilizer."

Meredith nodded, glancing over the first page of the printout. His eyeballs ached their continual reminder that three hours of sleep was inadequate for a man his age. "How's the landing strip holding out?" he asked.

"Pretty well, actually. Those repulsers the Ctencri sell are pretty hot, but because the shuttles use a smaller chunk of runway for both land and lift there's actually less overall wear and tear on the permcrete. It'll need some patching, of course, hut we've got three weeks before the Celeritas arrives on its supply run."

"Good. Do we have enough room to let the flyers lift?"

"Oh, sure. They don't need much more than their own length if you crank the repulsers up full."

"I know, but I'd rather not run them any higher than necessary. You never know what the half-life of a chunk of technology is going to be."

"The Ctencri numbers—"

"Were provided by the Ctencri equivalent of a sales rep. Need I say more?"

Brown harumphed. "Well, they should still have no trouble. It's mostly the center of the runway that's torn up, and the flyers can easily fit on either side."

"Fine." Meredith raised his wrist phone and keyed a number.

"Martello hangar; Greenburg," the device responded.

"Colonel Meredith. Have the flyers been checked out yet?"

"Two are ready to go, sir. The third'll be another hour or so."

"Okay. Have the first two teams head out—alert the tower to monitor and record all data."

"Yes, sir."

Meredith disco

"Mostly. The fields at Crosse were still too low in zinc and manganese this morning, and Dr. Haversham ordered another layer of fertilizer laid down. His guess was that the rivers bordering the fields cause a faster than normal ground water exchange that siphons off the extra minerals. Or something like that."