Wildcatter

“No, but I think I can cut those odds now, sir. Control, report the results of the last thirty simulated landings.”

— Most recent thirty landing simulations, twenty-three successful, seventy-seven percent.

“Well that settles it!” Jordan said. “Those odds are not-”

Seth had raised a hand to stop him. “Control, report the results of the last twenty simulated landings.”

— Most recent twenty landing simulations, eighteen successful, or ninety percent.

JC was starting to smirk. Not much got by him.

“Report the results of the last ten simulated landings.”

— Last ten landing simulations, one hundred percent successful.

JC roared in triumph and beat his fists on the table.

Jordan’s eyes burned like blue lasers; he was angry at being tricked. “How did you manage that, Prospector?”

“I cheated, sir. I need more time to make sure the cheat will work in practice.”

“I’ll accept that. You’re due on watch in a few hours and you look like you haven’t slept in a week. The rest of us aren’t helping you enough.”

Seth just shrugged.

“From now on you are relieved of all scheduled duties. I’ll post a new roster for the rest of us. You concentrate on the prospector duties. Control, enter orbit as proposed. Reese, clear away the dishes, please. Seth, I want a word with you.”

* * *

Jordan strode down the corridor to his cabin. Seth followed him in and closed the door.

“Sit!” Jordan pointed to the only chair, vaulted backwards on to a bed, and crossed his legs. Seth sat and laid one ankle on the other. His eyelids weighed tons. He had been working fifteen hours a day and not sleeping well the other nine.

“I can guess what you’re up to,” the captain said, “but it won’t work unless you promise him you’ll try a landing.”

“That’s what I’m working on, sir.”

“Can you drop any hints?”

“No, sir. I won’t know until Control can tell us more about conditions downside.”

With obvious disapproval, Jordan said, “Ok. But I warn you, if I think a landing looks too risky, I won’t allow it, no matter how much JC screams and yells. Now, listen. What I want to talk about … I know you desperately need to go and exercise your snoring muscles, but what I really need to discuss is you and Reese. You’re snapping at each other again.”

“I’m sorry. I-”

“No, it’s understandable. They call you dirty names and put you down every chance they get, whichever gender they are. It’s worse when you have to share a cabin. Do you know why they changed back to female again this time?”

“In case I do take the shuttle down. So you won’t make her ladyship risk her pretty little ass.”

Jordan smiled and shook his head. “No. She’s probably risked it in worse situations. Down, boy. I need to tell you a few things about Astrobiologist Platte.”

Seth crossed his ankles again. He didn’t need sex at the moment, or even talk about sex, just sleep. Hours and hours of sleep. He worried about letting the others down, letting himself down, muffing the only big chance he would ever get. If he went back home without trying the Cacafuego landing, his prospecting career would be over. No other expedition would ever hire a proven quitter, and he would never forgive himself. But he mustn’t let wishful thinking lull him into stupidity. If he tried and failed he would leave Golden Hind without a shuttle, so the others would have no choice but to head home again, with their hopes in tatters. What was the question again?

He thought back over the voyage. “You’ve been roommates twice?”

“Yes, but never this way round. Male, Reese’s a competent stud, a bit predictable but patient and gentle. We’ve agreed that next time we’ll change ends. You know how old they are?”

“Forty-one?”

“Older. But that’s subjective time. This is her fourth trip into the Big Nothing. She was born in 2282, ninety-four years ago. About seventy years before you were.”

Seth had no answer for that.

“They were one of the very first herms, Seth. Their family was wealthy, old money; their father won a Nobel Prize for medicine. Can you imagine a man who would put the experimental herm drugs into his own pregnant wife? Reese was conceived as a boy, if that matters to you. The process worked without a flaw, but they were a freak in their childhood, mocked, toured around like a circus. And their father was an absolute martinet, a disciplinary extremist. I gather their mother was a Marie Antoinette-level snob.”

“Tragic. Which part of this does she blame on me?”

“Seth, Seth! She blames herself. Raised by a tyrant, brought up in a mansion, taught to despise the lower classes and their lustful debaucheries-you know how priggish people were last century! Now, thanks to some time slip, she’s lived so long she finds herself in a whole new culture, and she goes and falls for an uncouth, uncultured, muscle-bound, penniless yahoo a quarter her age?”