©1995 D. A. Houdek

No reproduction or distribution without consent of the author

19,876 words  

"Adjustments" is a prequel to "Gandharvas." The story is science fiction.

Adjustments

by

D. A. Houdek

It wasn’t the work Joshua minded so much as the audience.  As he set the brakes of the John Deere B, he avoided looking around.  The Barrier wasn’t always operating perfectly.  Turning the fuel switch toward the smaller tank, he took the tractor out of gear and shoved the throttle forward halfway.  Then he climbed down between the huge tires to the ground.  The Adjusters had once tried to make him work barefoot, but he’d stubbornly clung to his work boots.  The sharp hay stubble would have cut his feet to shreds without them.  And, he argued, anyone who could have afforded a tractor could have afforded shoes. 

Joshua jerked his right foot up abruptly as a sharp stalk stabbed his foot anyhow.  Their compromise had been to insist his shoes were worn, with holes in the sole of one.  Cursing the Adjusters under his breath, Joshua went around to the side of the tractor.  This was the part that got the most reaction from his audience.  As he grasped the big, green flywheel on the side of the John Deere, he glanced out of the corner of his eye toward the hayfield’s edge.  Sure enough, the Barrier was shimmering today. 

A rusty barbed wire fence in the tall grass and weeds at the edge of the mown hay marked the “property line”.  Beyond it stretched a long field of corn, its rows of waving stalks appearing to be about knee-high to Joshua.  “Knee-high by the Fourth of July,” his father always cheerfully said, and Joshua always gritted his teeth.  This was the “neighbor’s” land and they were never to go onto it.  Joshua snorted softly to himself.  They weren’t to go onto it because they couldn’t.  Some days the illusion was perfect and Joshua felt as he used to as a child, that he was truly out in the country, working one field out of the endless stretch of fields that checkered northern Minnesota.  Sometimes he’d stand still, looking out across the sweep of land, forests and fields, baking beneath the cobalt sky, breathe in the humid air and be grateful for his life. 

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            Most of the time, lately, was like today.  The neighboring corn field quivered, and ghosting through the Barrier he could make out flashes of the watching crowd.  Glimpses of them came to him intertwined with the corn.  There must be a school group at the Center today for he saw faces that appeared to be about his own age.  Those boys — and girls, he added dryly — would likely be graduating in another year or so.  He ought to be among them, preparing for the future, not stuck here wrestling with ancient farm equipment while hoards of his peers gawked at him.  Turning his back to them, he reached into the pocket of his bib overalls and pulled out his April ‘42 issue of Astounding.  It was the only one he had left, the others had vanished one night.  This one had been hidden in the hayloft.  It was a pretty good cover picture, showing a spaceship in a forest.  He preferred to think of ships among the stars, with himself as the steely-jawed hero, but the story was good.

With the bitterness swelling in him, Joshua gave the tractor’s flywheel an extra hard yank.  The engine sputtered to life.  Even over the unmuffled chugging of the John Deere, he could hear the cheering filtering through the Barrier.  Audio was down today too, he thought as he climbed onto the bright green behemoth, flipped off the two brakes, and started the beast in motion.  Behind the tractor the hayrake, a leftover from horse-drawn days, creaked into motion.  The dried hay began to roll up into long, fat windrows behind them, ready for the bailer after another day of drying. 

A glance at the Barrier showed it firming up again, the illusion restored, but Joshua could sense the crowd at the Preservationist Center growing bored with his show and drifting away.  Well they should, he thought, as the tractor and rake crept around the hayfield.  They could go off to see other things, other eras.  He had to stay here, hour after hour, all day long in the sweltering heat, raking this hay.  It wasn’t a show to Joshua.  It was his life.

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            Twilight colored the sky in rose and gold by the time Joshua finished helping his father with the chores.  Dumping the last bucket of water into the pigs’ trough, Joshua gave his favorite pig, Epsilon, a quick scratch on the back, then hurried toward the house. 

Ma clanged the dinner bell vigorously.  Sourly, Joshua wondered if anyone in this era actually used one of those obnoxious things.  Still, the table she spread was worth tolerating a little racket.  A huge chunk of roast pork, surrounded by potatoes and carrots, sat in the center of the table.  The aroma made Joshua’s mouth water.  There were also dishes of radishes, beets, mashed turnips, pale green leaves of the new lettuce, and a big bowl of gravy. 

Sitting down at the table, Joshua promptly drained his glass of milk and went to the icebox for more.  The icebox handle jammed.  Joshua waited impatiently for a few seconds before he tried it again.  The illusion was supposed to be that the latch was finicky and sometimes needed a few tries before it opened, but Joshua knew the momentary delay was caused by the hidden machinery processing the new milk father had just brought in.  He couldn’t remember when he’d begun to suspect that, but a covert disassembly of the icebox a year ago had confirmed it. 

Joshua knew he’d probably get a reprimand from the Adjusters for waiting those few seconds rather than continuing to try to coax the fussy latch.  Ma gave him a frown as she passed by on her way to the stove to put a pie in to bake while they ate dinner.  They were always so afraid he’d say or do the wrong thing, break the illusion. 

Too bad, he thought, feeling grumpy as he sat down to the table.  Though the location of the monitors in the house were supposed to be a secret, Joshua thought he had identified them all, and so always angled his chair so that — he hoped — they couldn’t see him eat. 

Then he waited for the inevitable prayer and blessing on the meal.  He sneaked a peek at Ma’s two younger kids, his step-brother and sister, Matt and Laura.  Laura was peeking too.  She stuck her tongue out at him.  Joshua bit his lip so he wouldn’t grin.  They looked the part, he couldn’t help thinking.  Heck, he wasn’t even sure if they knew the setup yet, or if they believed that this really was 1948 and that old John Deere B was only fifteen years old, not one hundred and seventy-five years old.  Both kids had been too little when they came here to remember the outside world.  Now, in her print, flour sack dress, her dark red hair hanging in two stiff braids, nine-year-old Laura looked the very epitome of an old-time farm girl.  She’d spent the day, he knew, working on her embroidery and playing with her county fair lamb.  Matt was even younger, with a shockingly  bright red thatch of hair and a permanent cowlick.  Or, perhaps, the Adjusters thought a cowlick was necessary to the scene and made Matt’s hair that way. 

Father’s lengthy prayer ended, as always, with, “…and God bless President Truman and the good ol’ U. S. of A.”  There was a stirring as everyone reached for the food, piling their plates high.  Joshua concentrated on his food, wondering if those outside ate so well.  Probably not, he had to concede.  His memories of the before time were vague, those of a young boy, but he recalled scanty portions stripped of all the “bad things”.  Mostly the food had been stripped of taste.  Something good had come of Father taking on this job and marrying his step-Ma.  They both were happy here, as were Matt and Laura, at least for now.  It was only Joshua who couldn’t wait until he was old enough to decide for himself what kind of life he wanted.  Dousing the roast pork in the thick gravy, he took a bite and stared at the calendar, trying to convert the 1948 dates into 2105 dates.  He’d be seventeen in just one more week.  One more year and one more week and he’d be free.  He could hold out that long.  Not having any choice in the matter made it easier. 

Above them the bare lightbulb above the table flashed twice.  Joshua scarcely noticed.  Faulty electricity was part of the scene.  If the power went out entirely they’d be expected to drag out the old kerosene lanterns and spend the evening talking about how great that modern convenience electricity was.  Then they’d gather around the piano and Ma would play all the old songs and they’d have to sing along.  Still, it did provide a nice break from those dreadful old radio programs they usually listened to.  Joshua wasn’t deceived by any of it, he knew that the people in 1948 really spent their evenings watching television.  He remembered that from a trip to the Center when he was Matt’s age.  Some Adjuster must have decided those were Anachronisms and banned them.   

“Joshua,” Father’s deep voice boomed above the clatter of china and silverware.  He looked up.  Father’s eyes were twinkling in that way he always had when there was to be some new addition to the farm. 

“Yes, Father?”

Father’s strong, work-worn hand pointed up at the electric light.  “They flashed that to let us know they’re running a replay of another night, and we can talk freely for now.”

“Charles!” Ma snapped.  With her eyes she gestured toward Matt and Laura who listened and watched with wide eyes. 

“Oh,” Father huffed, looking at the children.  “Quite right.  Go up to your rooms now.  Stay there until you’re called.”

Even as they stood, Matt complained, “But Pa, I’m not done eatin’ yet.” 

“Well…  Take the cookie jar with you.”

Joshua watched as the children moved at near light speed to comply with this unusual order, snatching up the big, ceramic cookie jar as they ran.  He listened as their footsteps raced up the creaking stairs.

Father turned back to him.  “Now then…” he started.

Joshua cut him off.  “You mean the monitors are off?” he demanded. 

“Yes, but…”

Knowing how rare such situations were, Joshua hurried to say what he wanted.  “I’ll be eighteen in just a year and a week I’ll be already behind the others when I get to college and it will be hard enough to get into the space sciences without a real education and if you could just let me…”

“Son!  Son!” his father interrupted.  “Slow down.  I know how badly you want to go out to space.  That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”  He smiled and looked smug.  Ma smiled back at him and Joshua suddenly felt wary.  He remembered those smiles when they announced that they’d taken fully subsidized roles as Preservationists.  That decision had trapped him here for the last seven years and all but destroyed his best chance of making it into the space services. 

Father went on proudly.  “You see, son.  I do know how you want to go to space, and though we could keep you here on the farm until you’re eighteen, we’re not going to do that.”

Joshua stood up, whooping in delight.  “I can go?!”

The smug grin widened.  “We’re all going.  Joshua, your Ma and I have decided to take the whole family into space.”

His excitement draining away into suspicion, Joshua said, “Huh?”

“We’re migrating to a new planet.”

Joshua left the house as quickly as he could.  His head buzzed and he thought he might retch up that wonderful dinner.  They’d decided to colonize.  A new world had just opened up around Delta Pavonis that was Earth-like to well beyond the ninetieth percentile, moreover it had a climate and landscape much like northern Minnesota over most of one of its hemispheres.  Trained farmers like his family were just the sort who could make a go of a place like that.  The Colonial Service sought people like them on prime planets; people who could produce an excess and turn some profit for them fairly quickly — say in a generation or two — rather than going there and getting their silly selves killed right off, or starving because they didn’t know a cow’s teat from a wheat field. 

Joshua stumbled toward the dark barnyard.  Leaning against the fence, he ignored the swarm of mosquitoes as best he could and stared at the stars.  If Father had told him this seven years ago he’d have been exhilarated.  Going through space to tame a brand new world would have thrilled his ten-year-old soul.  Often he’d imagined himself as a space pioneer, standing on a hillside looking over land no one had ever seen before, while his spaceship rose into the starry night. 

Now…  Now, Joshua had seen, had lived first hand, the kind of endless toil it took to keep a farm alive even in this well-tamed, cultivated land.  There’d be no tractor to chug along helping with the work.  Colonists didn’t have machinery that depended on even that pathetic level of technology for maintenance.  Nope, Father had told him, the Adjusters would be taking the old John Deere away tonight and delivering the horses.  The calendar would be set back fifty years, maybe more, and they’d get a chance to really practice for their new lives.

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            Their new eternity, Joshua thought bleakly.  Heck, it wasn’t the work, Joshua didn’t mind hard work.  It was the time.  Colonizing was a one-way trip.  Ships didn’t return to take the eighteen-year-olds back to Earth to college and the space academies.  Ships didn’t come back to the colonies at all, not for a generation or more.  He’d be an old man before he saw another ship, another chance to chase his dream… and then he’d be too old to pursue it.

Surely they couldn’t make him go.  He was almost seventeen.  One more year and he’d be a free citizen, free to choose for himself what life he wanted.  For the sake of one little year they couldn’t take away his whole life?  Could they?

Joshua looked up, toward the stars.  They shimmered along the Barrier and he wasn’t sure he was seeing the projected stars, or lights from the apartment tower next door shining through it.  He looked higher yet, up to where the Barrier thinned and melded with the real sky.  It wasn’t a perfect 1948 sky.  The light from the city spilled over, dimming the crisp perfection of the stars.  Still, he could see them, could see the hazy whiteness of the Milky Way, the vivid constellations of the zodiac.  He wished he could see the glint of sunlight off the mammoth bulk of Terra Two station, but it was too far off in its synchronous orbit, and at this latitude it would be below the edge of the Barrier anyhow.  Besides, the Adjusters would never allow that Anachronism to shine in Joshua’s sky. 

His throat tight, Joshua felt a cold tear slide down his cheek.  Angrily, he swiped it away.  That would do no good.  He’d have to find another way out of this.  He was going to space, that he vowed, but it wasn’t going to be in the hold of a colony ship.

The last nudge of acceleration sent a quiver through the shuttle, then they were in freefall.  Terra Two station was out there, Joshua knew, hovering motionless relative to the shuttle.  He wished he could see it but there were no viewports in the cattlecar class, nor any screens. 

Freefall was a new experience.  When they hadn’t been under acceleration artificial gravity had kept some sense of weight on the passengers.  The passengers who had tested positive in the mandatory pre-screening for freefall sickness grinned happily, tranquilized by the drugs.  Joshua was pleased when he passed the test.  To him it was another indication he was a born spacer, not an earthpiggie, an expression he’d heard a woman use to one of the crew. 

Joshua had stared at the woman in fascination, realizing at once that she was the first genuine spacer he’d ever seen.  Her clothes were a clear Anachronism, out of style even seven years ago, the last time he’d seen current fashions.  That wasn’t what identified her so much as a distinct attitude radiating from her.  Her brazen stance and the condescending way she looked at the earthpiggies said she’d been out on some long jumps. 

As he’d neared her, determined to waylay her with questions about spacing, his father had clamped his hand on his arm and led him down the stairway to the lower level… where the colonists were… the eternal earthpiggies.

Joshua sighed, not even able to feel truly elated at experiencing freefall.  He was still stunned at how quickly and thoroughly his world had been tromped into nothingness.  The courts hadn’t even taken a full day to reject his request for emancipation, still less for his appeals to be placed in foster care on Earth until his eighteenth birthday.  No, the answers kept coming back.  A minor child’s life was the responsibility of his parents.  For the sake of one year, one tiny, scanty, minuscule year, Joshua was to be exiled to world from which there was no parole, no escape. 

On top of it he’d hurt his father.  He was, Joshua knew, only doing what he thought best for his family.  Well, maybe it was best for the other kids, but Joshua knew what he wanted of his life.  This wasn’t it.  He suspected it wouldn’t be enough for Laura either.  They’d spent many a night looking at the stars, talking over the fragments of news that reached them about Goddard and his rockets.  He’d even read her some of the stories from his magazines.

The wait in freefall was long as the other levels of the shuttle were unloaded.  Joshua shifted as well as he could.  Even without weight the cramped seats managed to be uncomfortable.  Locking mechanisms on the seat harnesses — for safety, they said — prevented him from even trying any freefall acrobatics. 

Joshua avoided looking at the rest of his family.  Matt and Laura were confused about what was going on with their big step-brother, he knew, but he didn’t tell them about his efforts to leave the family.  It would just hurt them to realize he’d tried to leave them forever. 

Forever.  The real implications hadn’t hit him until then.  Joshua knew in an abstract way, what pursuing his dream would mean.  No ships went to established colonies.  He wouldn’t see Laura as she grew.  Despite their little brother/sister spats, Joshua really was fond of Laura.  And Matt…  The boy was a born farmer, never so happy as when he was in the barn among the cattle, or weeding the garden.  Even at Matt’s age, Joshua had been daydreaming over the latest information on newly discovered worlds.  Always, always, Joshua had pictured himself as one of the explorers, discovering these new worlds, seeing them from space, not from behind a plow on the wrong side of a horse.

Finally the hatch to their level was opened.  A dozen people with stern faces and matching blue jumpsuits floated down into the compartment.  Joshua studied them with interest.  Their patches said “Station Escorts”.  They surveyed the colonists with expressions Joshua thought of as carefully rehearsed bland.  Each escort attached himself to a family group, releasing their seat harnesses, and fastening the family together by short leashes hooked to the belts at their waists.  Like a string of livestock being led away to the butcher, Joshua thought as their escort hooked the snaps to first Father’s, then Matt’s, then Ma’s, then Laura’s belts.  Joshua was the last in line. 

The escort — Rick, his name badge said, and he couldn’t have been more than a year or so older than Joshua — pulled them along, up to the ceiling and out into the upper decks of the shuttle.  Ma and Matt both drifted along placidly, still calmed by the freefall drugs.  Laura had had only a small dose, and that at Father’s insistence; she’d passed the screening.  All of this had been baffling to Laura and Matt, though Father and Ma had shielded them from most of the strangeness.  To them it was 1948… only in the past month it had become 1889; the electric lights and tractors had gone away without warning.  They’d both been delighted with the horses, but Joshua had spotted Laura staring at the Barrier one day when it was shimmering.  It was the first time he’d ever seen her do that. 

Now she looked around herself, bewildered.  Her braids floated up toward her face and Laura batted at them, the motion sending her jerking at the line. 

Joshua caught her hand.  “Relax, Laura.”  He was surprised at the strength of her grip. 

“I’m scared, Josh,” she whispered.  “Don’t leave me.”

He squeezed her hand.  “It’s all right,” he said, non-committally.

They waited while other groups were slowly pulled out of the shuttle, through a short tunnel, and into Terra Two station.  A tug at his belt came and the family, strung out like balloons on a string, were pulled into the station.  Joshua peered around eagerly.  This was it, the launch point of most deep space flights.  His expression faded.  It was distinctly unimpressive. 

Through the tunnel they came out into a spherical gray chamber, the airlock.  There was an outlet at the opposite side through which the colonists were being funneled.  Their turn finally came to pass through the funnel and into a long corridor.  On the other side the escorts aimed the colonists’ feet toward a red-striped wall.  As he followed along, Joshua found his feet being pulled down toward that wall, soon distinguishable as a floor.  The gravitation grew incrementally as they moved down the corridor until they were walking.  Joshua recognized the sensation, from the shuttle, of the light, inconsistent gravity as being artificially generated. 

A voice behind him made him turn, almost tripping in the low gee as his tether to Laura tightened.  The spacer woman pushed her way out of the airlock and into the corridor. 

“Well, why didn’t you wake me?” she snapped to someone behind her.  “And, no, I don’t need a wrangler,” she added, shaking off a persistent escort. 

Beneath a tangle of frizzy brown hair, the woman’s face was lean and tanned.  She wore a skimpy, faded outfit, and carried only a small pouch slung over one shoulder.  Again, Joshua tried to decide why he was so convinced she was an experienced spacer.

Pushing past the line of colonists, she muttered to Joshua as she passed, “Don’t fall over your feet,” as he fell over his feet.  Joshua blushed and tried to recover but found it hard to get traction.  He made Laura stumble which jerked the line through all the others, earning a black look from their escort. 

“Watch it, kid,” the escort snapped. 

Suddenly Joshua had had enough of being treated like he was part of a not-too-bright herd of cattle.  Why, he thought defiantly, people used to come to watch him work, doing things they couldn’t do.  He bet that escort wouldn’t even know what a John Deere B was, much less be able to figure out how to start it.

Yanking at the tether on his belt, Joshua let it fall.  “I’ll stay close,” he said in answer to the escort’s narrow-eyed questioning look. 

The escort shrugged.  “Have it your way.  Just don’t fall behind.  You get lost in Terra Two and they won’t find you until you’re nothing but a pile of bones.”

“I won’t,” Joshua answered irritably.  He used to build tunnels in the hayloft, piling the haybales this way and that to create a giant three dimensional maze.  Inside the haybale maze it was pitch black.  Joshua never got lost in the maze. 

Through another doorway at the end of the gravity corridor, the family was stopped by the Port of Entry barrier.  Three counters stood at the end of the room, each with a Custom’s officer processing each colonist family.  

Joshua’s family stepped into this larger room and stood in a cluster by their escort, awaiting their turn.  Edging away from the family, Joshua turned to see the spacer woman pause by a counter in an alcove behind him, one he hadn’t noticed before.  A security officer sat behind it, watching the arrivees to the station.  Beyond him was an unmarked door. 

The spacer woman pulled a mylar sack from her pouch and tossed it to the guard.  He caught it easily as it drifted toward him.  It took experience with low gee, Joshua decided, to make an accurate throw like that. 

“I knew you’d be back, Diana,” the guard called as the woman went past him. 

She waved as she disappeared through the door.  A few groups were still ahead of his family, so Joshua edged toward the door. 

“Hey.  You can’t go in there.  Get back to your escort,” the guard said immediately. 

“What’s in there?” he asked, trying to sound young and innocent.  It wasn’t much of a reach, he decided.

“Never mind.  Just get back where you belong.”  The guard’s voice sharpened and Joshua noticed he had hidden the mylar sack.  Joshua glanced at the door once more before slowly going back toward his family.  It wasn’t exactly unmarked, he saw.  A small plaque by the door said it was the “Station Escorts’ Lounge”.  Beneath that someone had scratched “Earthpiggie Wranglers Holding Pen.” 

Waiting behind his family, Joshua scrutinized the room.  The walls and floor were featureless gray save for stripes and markings to tell people where they were to stand and wait.  The ceiling, he noticed with interest, was a high gridwork of exposed piping and beams.  Lights were suspended below this unfinished tangle, leaving the depths of the ceiling in shadow.  The lowest beam was still far too high to reach, but Joshua bet that in this low gee he could leap that high.  Once there…  He was farm boy strong, accustomed to lifting haybales and lugging bucket after bucket of water.  If he got hold of that ceiling, he was sure he could stay there.

First he needed a distraction.  Crowded around him were dozens of other colonist families.  Finding a boy similar to his age and build, and dazed by the drugs, wasn’t too difficult.  So distracted was this boy’s family by a crying baby, that they didn’t notice Joshua release his tether and lead him over to his own family.  Cautiously he took the dangling tether from Laura’s waist and fastened it to the boy.  Then he edged away through the crowded room, getting beyond the guard’s line of sight to that door as best he could. 

It was only a moment before Laura felt a tug at her waist and turned to look, screaming when she saw the stranger fastened to her.  In the commotion that followed Joshua leaped.  His fingertips caught a beam and he pulled himself up.  There was no place to get a foothold so he had to hold himself by his fingers.  He made his way slowly across the ceiling until he was above the alcove. 

It seemed the guard would never leave his post to help the confused families.  Joshua’s fingers grew numb as he clung to the pipes.  Even his lessened weight grew intolerable until he thought he might have to give up and drop back to the floor.  Above the turmoil he heard his father’s voice calling his name, and he caught a glimpse of Laura looking around for her big brother.  His throat tightened when he realized this might be the last time he ever saw her if he succeeded.  He almost let go, but some portion of him was too stubbornly determined to meet his own future on his own terms.  His fingers clung even more tightly to the ceiling. 

Finally the time came.  The guard had moved away.  No one was looking at the alcove.  Joshua dropped to the floor.  It seemed to take forever to fall.  Hitting the floor lightly, he collapsed into a ball, hidden by the guard’s desk.  Creeping toward the door, he stayed low.  He eased it open and shut it behind him. 

Inside he stood.  The room was empty save for some couches.  The lights were dim.  Joshua filled his pockets from some candy and crackers in bowls on the table.  Then he searched the room in minute detail.  That woman had gone in here.  She hadn’t come out.  Joshua was certain she’d gone through here to sneak by Customs, bribing the guard with whatever was in that sack.  Now she was gone and there were no other exits from the room. 

Feeling his way along the walls, he searched for secret doors, hidden catches, anything.  There wasn’t another door.  There had to be another way out.  The ceiling in here was low and quite solid.  She hadn’t gone that way.  Likewise the floor.  That left the vent. 

Joshua stared at the grill and felt the air wafting out of it.  It was big enough for a person.  He gulped.  The hayloft mazes he made could be nothing to what the airducts in this vast space station could be. 

The commotion outside neared.  It wouldn’t take them too long to decide he’d come in here.  Joshua made his decision quickly.  Dropping to his knees he pried off the grate, not surprised when it came off easily.  He eased his way into the vent, feet first.  Pulling the grate into position behind him, he slid away from the opening as the door opened. 

“Not in here,” came the guard’s voice.

“Is there any other way out?” he heard his father’s voice boom out. 

There was a long pause before the guard answered.  “No.”  Joshua almost chuckled.  The guard knew about this unofficial exit and didn’t want to give it away. 

The door closed, then opened again a minute later.  The guard called softly into the room, “I know you’re in here, boy.  Don’t you dare go through those vents.  You’ll get lost and never find your way out.  You just wait here and I’ll be back for you.”  The door opened and closed again as the guard left.

Joshua tried to decide what to do next.   The guard was right.  The vents were dark, as dark as his haybale tunnels, only Joshua had built them and knew there were exits; exits to light.  Here…  Still, that woman had known the way. 

Sitting still, Joshua tried to think how he could follow her.  The vent went in two directions from where he was.  He felt the metal floor, hoping to find a trace of heat from the woman’s passage, but there was none.  Without hope he felt the other direction and pulled his hand back with a faint coating of dust on it.  In the light spilling through the grate he stared as he brushed it off.  No one had gone that way.  If he was careful he should be able to follow her at each intersection. 

Here began his future among the stars, Joshua thought, in a cramped and dusty air vent.

 It seemed forever before Joshua sensed a change in the blackness.  Each choice of direction was filled with uncertainty, following the most subtle of clues.  At one point the vent went downward for a distance.  Joshua’s stomach turned over several times and he realized he must be passing out of the gravity of that level.  For a few moments up and down were confused.  He pushed on in the direction that had been ‘down’ until he felt a recognizable sense of gravity again.  He must have gone to a lower level.

Something made his nose twitch.

“Bacon?” he said aloud, startling himself with the sound of his voice echoing through the vents.

He sniffed again.  Perhaps he’d gone insane, lost in here for days, for Joshua was certain he smelled frying bacon and eggs, and — he inhaled deeply — yes, it was coffee.  These were familiar smells from breakfast on the farm, where their aroma filled the house before dawn each day.  But in the real world, he was certain, such things were not eaten.  He remembered plainly how that first breakfast on the farm had sealed in his mind the fact that they were in a new, different world. 

Shaking his head, Joshua tried to trace the air currents.  At a four-way intersection he had a momentary attack of panic when he couldn’t find any indication of dust to guide him.  The tantalizing food scents swirled around him in a tangle at this intersection; he couldn’t choose a direction.

Peering hard, he thought he detected a slight lessening of the darkness to his right.  He blinked and couldn’t be sure.  Better than staying here, he thought. 

After one more corner Joshua was certain there was light ahead.  Letting out his breath with a long sigh, Joshua moved faster.  He hadn’t realized how scared he was until then. 

The light grew and was joined by the decided scent of cinnamon rolls baking.  Joshua’s mouth watered and his stomach growled.  He hadn’t eaten since well before leaving Earth.  Digging into his pocket he wolfed down the handful of candy and crackers he’d snatched from the escort’s lounge.  It only served to heighten the gnawing in his middle. 

Sounds joined the light and smells.  There was a clatter of dishes and voices.  Low and distant, more of a feeling in the metal than actual sound, a rumble vibrated.  Rounding a turn, the floor gave way beneath him.  Uncontrollably he slid down a steep incline, a long yelp escaping his throat.  He hit the bottom with a bang, slamming feet first into a grate.  The grate popped open, depositing Joshua unceremoniously on his backside on the floor.

Joshua found himself staring up at the underside of several dishes held in the hands of a waitress.  Her pink lips pursed and her eyes blinked at him, showing shockingly blue lids.  Across the harshly lit room the talk and clatter of utensils ceased and at least fifty pairs of eyes focused on Joshua.  For a span of four heartbeats there was dead silence, then all the men and women resumed eating and talking as though a teenage boy hadn’t just dropped out of the air vent into their midst.  The waitress stared down at him a second longer.  Joshua wanted to crawl under the counter.

“Uh… hel… hello,” Joshua stuttered.  “Ma’am,” he added.

She smiled perfunctorily, stepped over Joshua, and delivered the plates to one of the tables.  Joshua climbed to his feet, rubbing his backside.  He hitched his bib overalls up and looked around, trying to appear nonchalant.  The room was filled with men, and a few women, all wearing dirty, work-worn coveralls and jumpsuits.  The waitresses wore yellow dresses with frilly lace handkerchiefs in the pockets.  To Joshua the room screamed Anachronism so loudly he had to fight that twitchy feeling that came before the Adjusters showed up.

He had to get out of here.  Joshua hadn’t expected to come across this many people.  The colony ship didn’t leave for three days; he had to find a place to hide until then.  Probably the whole station was on alert searching for him.  Though everyone seemed to be ignoring him as thoroughly as if he was invisible, he felt watched.  Maybe it was the past seven years, living life inside the Preservation Barrier. 

Gulping to quell the rumbling of his stomach, Joshua scanned for the exit.  The waitress came back to where Joshua stood, stepping behind the counter. 

“You look like you could use a bite.  Let me fix you something to eat,” she said, examining him with that same bland, but knowing, expression.

Even as his stomach growled “yes!”, he heard himself saying, “Thank you, no, ma’am.  I don’t have any money.”

The bright pink lips twisted in an ironic smile.  “Gee, that’s a surprise,” she commented.  “Tell you what, you can pay for it when you get some money.”

“I do thank you,” Joshua said, “but I couldn’t be beholden.”

The smile flickered somewhere between amused and respectful.  “Well, the offer stands.”  She paused.  “You might want to go right out of the door.”  She pointed in the direction.  “Take the first corridor to your left, it’s a good place to hide.”  Bending below the counter, she glanced at him again.  “Though you might want to reconsider colonizing.  You seem like the perfect type.”

As the cafe doors slid shut behind him, Joshua wondered, somewhat sullenly, what she meant by that last comment.  He was the perfect spacer type, of that he was certain.  He didn’t mean to be a colonist no matter who thought it was the best thing for him. 

He stopped outside the cafe door and gaped.  Before him was an area just about the size of the hayfield, maybe even bigger.  The walls were so far off he couldn’t make out their details.  Huge containers and equipment covered the floor.  With all the flurry of work, and machinery moving about, it all didn’t produce the noise that a single John Deere B did. 

He stepped a little further out onto that huge floor.  Distant klaxons began to howl.  Attention focused on a section of the far wall.  A red light flashed and the floor shook as enormous doors rolled open.  Beyond them Joshua could see another set of doors also opening.  He realized that beyond this lock he was looking into the hold of a cargo ship.  His feet led him involuntarily another step toward the wonder.  This may be his way out.  If he could sneak aboard that ship…

“Hey, kid!” a voice sounded by his ear.

Joshua spun to see a slender man standing beside him.  Cursing himself for letting the stranger get so close unaware, he thought how the old sow Gertrude would have taken a chunk out of his thigh if he’d ever been so inattentive.  A cold shiver down his spine reminded him that more than a little nip was at stake here, if he got caught he’d pay for it with the rest of his life.

Flexing his work-hardened muscles, Joshua stepped back and examined the stranger.  He wasn’t dressed like the others.  His clothes were slick and shiny, not the kind of clothes one would do real work in.  Joshua stole a glance at the man’s hands; saw that they were soft, even more delicate looking than Laura’s, for even her young hands had seen more work than this dandy’s. 

“What can I do for you, sir?” Joshua asked in the polite way he’d been taught. 

A low chuckle bobbed the Adam’s apple in the skinny throat.  “No, son.  It’s what I can do for you.”

Joshua narrowed his eyes.  “What would that be, sir?”  This fellow must not be anyone official or he’d be dragging him back to his family and the colonists’ holding area right now. 

Ducking aside as the smarmy fellow tried to lay his arm across Joshua’s shoulders, Joshua quickly looked around.  No one seemed to be paying any attention to them. 

“Relax, boy,” the man said.  His ingratiating tone was beginning to vex Joshua.  “Let’s take a walk and we’ll talk.”  His voice dropped to a whisper.  “You don’t want to be seen around here.  That’s Customs and Security swarming over that ship.”  He gestured significantly with his eyes toward the activity on the cargo floor.  Joshua wanted to get out of the open anyhow, so he walked beside the stranger.  They went to the left, the opposite direction the waitress had told Joshua to go. 

“I think you’re just the sort of person I’m looking for,” the man said affably.  “What’s your name?”

He hesitated before he answered.  “Joshua.”

“Josh.  Good, good.  Josh, my boy, you can call me Archer.  Think of me as your friend.  I’m guessing you could use one right about now, eh?”

Joshua listened to Archer’s prattle with half his attention, studying his surroundings with the other half.  Reflecting on the air vents that had been so oppressive and confusing at the time, he decided he could retrace his path.  The correct turns had been fairly simple, it was the wrong turns that had made it seem complicated.  Why, he bet he could learn his way around this whole darned space station in no time at all.  That threat about getting lost was just a tale to scare him. 

“…clever young man like you,” Archer flattered him.  Joshua ignored his words and tried to figure out what this character wanted of him.  “Got past Customs without getting registered…  You’re kind of invisible on Terra Two right now, but you can’t get work without registering and that would bring trouble down right on your head…”  Joshua hadn’t thought of that.  The notion sent an uncomfortable lump to the pit of his stomach. 

“…But I think I can help you out a lot, my boy.  And just for you helping me out a little.”

“Doing what?”  Joshua asked flatly.  He didn’t have to question whether some city slicker might take him for a naive hayseed.  He knew he was an innocent country bumpkin.  Heck and gosh darned all mighty!  Sure, he’d been raised on a farm in the 1940s in a world of the twenty-second century, but that didn’t make him either ignorant or stupid.  He’d seen this sort before, during the War years.  While Hitler’s forces were rolling all over Europe, this type of junior quisling was at work on the homefront, running a black-market in rationed goods — goods which farms had in abundance. 

Joshua shook himself.  That had all been a Preservationist act, he knew, but to him it had been completely real.  Certainly the lessons he learned from those pseudo-War years were valid, for now they let him recognize just the sort of snake Archer was. 

“Oh, nothing too difficult.  Deliver a few packages for me.  Maybe meet some friends who’d rather not have Customs paw through all their private things…  Nothing, really.  Just a few favors for friends.” 

With the best gee-whiz smile he used for the monitors when reading an old Astounding, Joshua said, “Golly!  And you’d pay me just for that?” 

A satisfied expression crept over Archer’s face.  “Just for that.  For now.  Now come with me.  We’ll get you out of sight, get some food, and let you clean up, then we’ll get you started on a little project for me involving that ship you were admiring so.”

“I don’t know,” he said as guilelessly as possible.  Inwardly his heart leaped.  This might be a way onto the freighter.  “My pa always said never to take charity.  I couldn’t take advantage of your hospitality that way.” 

Archer’s suppressed his annoyance with obvious effort.  “All right, kid, have it your way.”  He dug in a pocket and pulled out a handful of multi-colored tabs.  “This is station currency — that’s ‘money’, kid.”  He dumped them into Joshua’s hand.  “Consider it an advance on your salary.  Now come with me and I’ll charge you for everything.  Does that suit your sense of pride?”

Grinning, Joshua said, “You betcha.  Put ‘er there.”  He spit on his empty hand and stuck it out toward Archer.  The grimace of disgust on the man’s face brought the first genuine joy to Joshua that he’d felt since Father had announced they were migrating.  Bravely, Archer started to raise his hand.  Joshua closed the distance, clasping it firmly.  Archer freed his hand as soon as quickly as possible, wiping his hand on his pants. 

“Now, let’s…”

“There he is!”

The shout echoed through the cavernous cargo area.  Heads snapped around.  In a flash, Joshua realized he was the subject of that cry.  Across the floor uniformed figures began running in his direction. 

“Sorry,” Joshua snapped to Archer, who was already trying to distance himself from the boy.  Whipping around, Joshua ran. 

Back toward the door of the cafe, he rushed to the enclosed corridor the waitress had recommended.  By the door he dodged a some men and a woman emerging with unhurried ease.  Their faces were a blur as he went by, but his sharp ears heard their comments as they recognized him as the boy who’d dropped into their dinner. 

Coming to a corner, Joshua spared a glance back.  The workers blocked the entire corridor, standing in a casual circle, chatting. 

“Clear the way!” his pursuers shouted, but the workers held their ground, solidly blocking the corridor. 

“What’s going on?” one asked coolly and Joshua sent a quick mental blessing their way before he turned and ran again.

The corridor grew narrower and dimmer.  First it curved to the left, then to the right.  It rose in a slow incline, then went down a flight of stairs.  All along the way Joshua kept a sharp lookout for the “corridor to the left” the waitress had mentioned, but never saw it.  It seemed he was running down a dead-end with no outlet. 

The gravity surged, sending him bobbing uncontrollably upward.  Flailing his arms and legs, he sought anything stable.  Once he regained the floor he went more slowly for a time, almost skating along rather than running.  He hardly seemed to weigh anything.

Joshua skidded to a halt at a truly perplexing sight.  A stairway climbed the wall in front of him, then twisted in a corkscrew leading to the ceiling off to the right.  Everything in him told him that he couldn’t climb those bizarre stairs, but hollow shouts reverberated down the passageway behind him spurring him onward against all reason.  He took the first two steps slowly.  On the third a wave of dizziness swept over him and he realized the gravitation had changed with each step.  More quickly, but still dubiously, he climbed the stairs, finding that the “floor” he had been running on had now become a “ceiling”.  With a laugh, Joshua dashed onward.

Two hours later Joshua was certain he was lost.  To evade his pursuers he’d taken a side passage, then another off of that, then another.  He’d passed through half a dozen of the odd gravity twists so that he didn’t know which was the real “up”, if there even was such a thing in this three-dimensional labyrinth.  He could make out the outline of doorways off the corridor at many points but none would open for him.  Whenever he saw or heard someone, he ducked away. 

Eventually his pace slowed to a walk.  Despite his weight being not more than a third of his Earth weight, he was still tired, and very thirsty.  Even hunger had been shunted off in favor of thirst.  He considered that at this moment he’d gladly trade all his hopes for the future and harness himself to the backside of a plow-horse forever just for one swallow of warm water from a muddy puddle. 

Nothing to be done, he told himself, but go on.  That’s what you did when the crops failed and the sow crushed all her piglets and the equipment broke and there was no money to fix it.  You went on. 

Joshua didn’t know how long he’d trudged through the madman’s puzzle that was Terra Two station.  He’d known the station was big, but that knowledge was a pale thing next to the reality.  Feeling light-headed, Joshua slumped back against one of the doorways, thinking he’d rest, just for a moment. 

He didn’t know how long he slept when he felt a prodding at his side.

“Just a minute more, Father,” he muttered without opening his eyes. 

The prodding continued.  Forcing his gummy eyes open, Joshua peered upward.  A lean female shape stood over him.  Tanned legs stretched to tattered, faded shorts.  He continued looking up, blushingly over her scantily clad top to the bemused face crowned by a tangled crown of sun-bleached hair. 

“It’s you,” he croaked.  It was the spacer woman… Diana, the guard had called her.

With her hands on her hips, Diana stared down at him.  “Are you following me?” she demanded.

Joshua struggled to his feet.  He was surprised to find he was a bit taller than she was.  “Uh…  In a manner of speaking, ma’am,” he managed.

She chuckled.  “Well, you found me.”  She studied him, frowning.  “You’re a mess.  Come with me.”

Following her down the corridor, Joshua swallowed several times to moisten his throat.  “Excuse me, miss,” he called.  Diana turned toward him with an eyebrow raised as a questionmark.  “Is there somewhere I could get a drink of water, please?”

She gestured him to follow again.  Glancing back, she commented, “I don’t recall the last time someone called me ‘miss’, or even ‘ma’am’.  In fact, I don’t think anyone ever has.  Where are you from?”

“Minnesota,” he rasped.

“Hmmph.  Me too.  I don’t recall your kind of manners there.”

“I’m from 1948.”

“Huh?”

“Preservationists, ma’am.”

“Stick to ‘miss’,” she said.  “It doesn’t sound as old as ‘ma’am’.  Here we are.”

Joshua watched as Diana stopped in front of a doorway.  He’d seen others marked with this symbol, but hadn’t known what it had meant.  The small marking was of wavy lines with little droplets above and little stick people bent into positions that seemed rather obscene to Joshua.  Diana dug in the tight pocket of her shorts, pulling out one of the colored money chips. 

“Wait,” he said.  “I have some of those.”

Staring at him oddly, Diana selected one of his blue chips and fed it into a narrow slot by the picture symbol.  The door slid rapidly aside.

“Hurry up.  It doesn’t stay open long,” Diana said, urging Joshua into the small chamber ahead of her.  The door closed behind her. 

The smell of water was in the air.  Joshua sniffed gratefully.  A sink with a faucet was in front of him, cups in a dispenser above it.  He flipped on the faucet and yanked at the cups.  Nothing happened.  He turned to Diana with a puzzled look.

“Nothing’s free on Terra Two,” she intoned.  “Not even the water.  Use a red chit.”

With the tiny chunk of red plastic fed into the appropriate slot, Joshua finally got some water and a cup.  He gulped it down gratefully, refilled and drank some more.  With his remaining splash of water he wiped his face with his hands.  Seeing nothing to dry them with he used his overalls.

Diana snorted indelicately.  “That didn’t help much.”

“The vents were dirty.”

“You did follow me.  You owe the guard a bribe, I’ll wager.  Though from what I’ve been hearing, it will take more bribes than you have money to cool down this place.  They’re hot to get you, kid.”

“My name is Joshua,” he said, feeling glum. 

“I’m Diana Lindquist,” she told him.  “Where’d you get station chits?  Not something most colonists can get their hands on, not even some station folk — they prefer everyone used their credit accounts.”

Joshua gave her a quick rundown of what happened to him since diving into the airvents after her.  She shook her head. 

“Archer’s a bad fellow,” she said.  Then she added something that made Joshua’s heart do a double beat.  “Being on the wrong side of his bunch is likely to get you killed.  Your best bet might be to turn yourself in and hide out on that colony.”

Under Diana’s instructions his pile of colored money chits diminished again as he took a shower and had his clothes cleaned.  While the hot, soapy water jetted down on him, Joshua considered his options.  It was a short reflection, not even lasting as long as the shower’s wash cycle.  He simply had no options. 

Goll ding it!  He just couldn’t crawl back with his tail tucked between his legs.  He’d set out to be a spaceman and he was going to, no matter who said what.  Maybe he’d find a way to sneak back into that freighter.  Or, and he withheld this as cherished, if unlikely, fantasy, maybe they’d all decide they’d made a mistake and the space agencies would come to him, begging him to join their service.  He’d be standing so tall and proud in his fine uniform as...

“Yow!”  Joshua leaped backward as the steamy rinse water suddenly turned ice cold then sputtered to a stop.  “Ow,” he added when he bounced too high in the low gravity and banged his head on the ceiling. 

“You all right?” Diana’s voice called. 

“Fine,” he muttered as the drier came on.  Moments later Diana handed him his clothes over the door.  She’d seemed amused that he wouldn’t undress in front of her.  He was pleased to find his clothes clean, dry and neatly folded for him.  For some reason, though, the processor had put neat creases in the front of his bib overalls.  It looked absurd, Joshua thought, but he felt much better, other that the serious hollow spot in his stomach.

“You look better,” Diana said as he stepped out of the shower dressing room.  She stared at the crease in his overalls, commenting that she must have hit the wrong controls on the processor.  He stared at her too.  In the interim she’d cut her hair off, leaving a sleek, short style. 

“I couldn’t get a comb through it,” she shrugged.

It seemed the best thing he could do was follow Diana.  She hadn’t turned him in yet, and had taught him a thing or two about Terra Two. 

She asked, “You want to get something to eat?”

“You bet,” he said, his bleak mood lifting considerably just at the thought.  “It’s been ages since I ate.”

“Me too.  I think I drank most of my meals the last two days on Earth,” she said thoughtfully.  “Caribbean rum, mostly.  Turns out sailboats make me as sick as freefall does.  Well,” she added briskly, “That’s the last of that.  I’m never going down to that wretched planet again.” 

She turned down a dim passageway, scuttling up the wall in an improbable move that Joshua realized, when he tried to follow, was the result of another direction shift in the gravitation.  His head spun as he tried to convince his confused equilibrium that this new “down” was the same one they’d been using before.  Diana cursed under her breath, using words Joshua had never heard before, as she skittered and bounced crossing another one of the gravity changes. 

“I hate artificial gravity,” she muttered through gritted teeth. 

“Where are we going?” Joshua ventured to ask. 

“A place I know.  We can get something to eat, and drink, there.  It’s called the Escher and it’s sort of… exclusive.”

Uneasily, Joshua asked, “Miss Diana, will there be lots of other people there?”

She paused and her hazel eyes twinkled at him.  “Don’t worry.  No one at the Escher will turn you in.” 

The corridors became less maintained, less official, in appearance, Joshua decided was the best way to describe it.  The lighting was intermittent.  At points the floor was uneven, with piping and ducts bisecting the floor.  Diana took the obstacles with practiced ease, but Joshua put too much muscle into a couple of his leaps and banged his head.

“Mass and weight aren’t the same,” Diana said, laughing at him.

Diana stopped at what looked to Joshua like an abyss.  She poised at the edge and grinned at Joshua.  He peered down into  the darkness and couldn’t discern a bottom.  Discretely, he moved back a few steps.  Noticing the mocking smile on Diana’s face, he blushed, but moved no closer to the pit. 

“I think it goes all the way to the outer hull of the fifth western radial arm,” she said.  Joshua wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded big. 

“We have to jump,” she added.  He stared at her, wondering when his companion had gone mad.  From the glitter in her eyes he knew she must be teasing him…  Maybe.

“Yes, Miss Diana.  After you,” he said gallantly, letting his own grin spread to match hers.

With a chuckle, she said, “I like you.”  Her face grew serious and she told him, “This part is tricky, but just the first time.  Mainly you have to be convinced in your own mind that you can do it, and do it easily.”  She pointed across the void to the far wall, from which stretched another corridor, the floor of which was rotated almost one hundred and eighty degrees from the one on which they stood.  “We’re at about one-third gee here with that,” she pointed, “as down.  That wall is down over there, but it’s more like a half gee, so you’ll hit harder than you’ve been.  In the middle, over the shaft, you’re in freefall.  What you have to do…”

She sprang into the void, still talking.  Joshua gasped. 

“…is have enough velocity to carry you through the zero gee spot until the next gravity field picks you up.”  In the middle she twisted herself around, pointing her feet at the far wall.  She landed, collapsing only slightly to absorb the force of impact.  “Turn in the middle to get pointed the right way.”

It took all of Joshua’s Minnesota farmer stoicism to get him to take that leap.  The feeling of weight plunging so abruptly to the falling sensation of zero gravity caught him by surprise, confusing him as to which way to aim his feet.  Flailing, he tried to turn, then felt a slight pull that rapidly grew stronger.  He’d over estimated his turn and landed unceremoniously on his bottom on the “floor”.

It was an ungraceful move, but Joshua felt an unexpected surge of pride.  By golly, he was a spaceman.

Looking up at Diana for approval, he heard her chuckle.  “Not bad.  You’ll do it perfectly the next time.”  She started down the corridor.  With a last glance at the chasm he’d conquered, Joshua hurried to catch up. 

“How many don’t make it?” he had to ask, had to know how great a risk he’d just conquered.

“Oh.  I kind of lied to you,” she admitted.  “You can’t fall down that shaft, the fields are all the wrong way.  The worst you can do is bang yourself up a little landing, or maybe get yourself stuck in the freefall area.  No problem getting out of that, not like in vacuum, you can push against the air.”

Joshua didn’t have time to thoroughly digest that before she said, “Here we are,” and pushed aside an unmarked door.  “The Escher,” she announced.

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            Stepping inside, Joshua stared about in astonishment.  For all the strange things he’d seen done with artificial gravity this day, the Escher topped them all, and then some. 

A tree grew from the ceiling into a large open area.  People clung to the upper branches, floating effortlessly in mid-air.  Some swooped and played in the air by them.  Chairs and tables were attached to floors, walls, and ceiling at every conceivable angle and attitude.  Stairs climbed walls, some ending in empty space, others turning back onto themselves.  No one section of wall or floor was large, but the total amount of space was enormous, for no surface, nor area that had no surface, was wasted.  People were scattered about the room, some alone, but most in pairs or small clusters.  He noticed two people talking who were upside-down relative to each other.

The wall to the right had an opening through which he could see the floor was moving, rotating against the rest of the place.  Diana was trying to pull him toward that section.  Stepping through the opening onto the red carpeted floor there, Joshua found himself lighter, but more stable.  The twitchy inconsistencies of the artificial gravity no longer vexed him. 

Diana flopped down into a chair, sighing with obvious relief.  “God, I hate artificial gravity,” she moaned, rubbing her stomach. 

“I thought spacers could stand anything like that,” Joshua said, thinking of the stories he’d read. 

“Not this one.  This section here,” she gestured around them, “is picking up centrifugal gravity from a different section.  The Escher is sort of at the joining point of three or four different sections of Terra Two.”

“Won’t, uh, won’t I be found here?  It’s awfully public,” he asked reluctantly.  No one seemed to be looking at them, but he felt as though eyes were probing into him.

“I don’t think the Escher’s even on the maps.  I’ve never seen anyone official in here.  Everyone here is a spacer of some sort.  Independents, that is, from freighters and private ships.  Not a one would turn you in for any price.  The stuffies over in the Corps and the Service have their own places, wouldn’t demean themselves coming here. 

“Most people here are Scouters,” she added, giving him a sidelong glance as if measuring his reaction to the news.

Joshua didn’t know how to react.  He was relieved that he was safe here, probably safe, that is.  But he’d never heard of Scouters, and told her as much.  While the table placed great mounds of food in front of him, and drinks before her, Diana told him of the Scouters.  They explored space and discovered planets for bounty, operating independently of any government or organization.  It attracted the misfits of space, as she called them, the ones who couldn’t take the regimentation and restriction of the other services.  They weren’t of lesser ability, she hastened to add.  Most had rejected the Services, not the other way around. 

Scouters went into the heart of danger, plunging off into the great unknown on missions of exploration and discovery.  They didn’t colonize, they didn’t organize, they didn’t do anything but “the fun part.” 

The more she told him, the more Joshua became convinced that the Scouters were for him.  They went out in small crews, only eight to ten per ship.  They’d explore one or two star systems, then return to Earth, to Terra Two to report what they’d found. 

“Why don’t they do more than that, once they’re out so far?” he asked.

“The point is to get the information back to Earth as quickly as possible.  And ‘quickly’ isn’t really too possible when you’re dealing with interstellar distances,” she explained.  “Our best communications travel at the speed of light, making it twenty years or more for information to make it back here from the radius we’re out to now.”

“But the ships don’t take that long.  How much faster than light do they go?” he asked.

Diana looked pained.  “They don’t go faster than light,” she said firmly.  “Get that idea out of your head.  What they do is…  It’s hard to explain in words.”  She stopped and chuckled.  “I recall having this very conversation myself at about your age, only I was on the asking end.  The twistor ships bypass the speed of light.  Oh, to be sure, we use standard reaction propulsion for most of it.”

“Rockets?”

The pained expression turned into a grimace.  “Rockets don’t go to the stars,” she said coldly, then grinned.  “Sorry, I just went through this with my family back on Earth.  Earthpiggies of magnitude one, they are, and it hurts me to say that of my own genetic relations.  It hurts to say they’re genetic relations, for that matter.  Anyhow, we accelerate as close as we can get to the speed of light — which really isn’t very close — then the twistor takes over and we use a different aspect of space to transit to another point.”

She paused, taking a big gulp of her drink and a few bites out of a dish of fried rice Joshua hadn’t touched.  It had taken some time but he was beginning to get full.  A contented feeling spread from his middle outward, and he thought a nap might be a fine thing about now. 

“That’s a dreadful description,” Diana continued.  “I can’t say I really understand it all myself, though numerous physicists have tried to get through to me.  I can do the math,” she said thoughtfully, “but the applications seem to go right beyond me.”  She shook her head.  “Anyhow, someone told me once that we really shouldn’t have this technology yet.  A really brilliant guy — who was actually a woman — without proper training or credentials was reading about twistors and spinors and space-time and such, old stuff a couple of twentieth century physicists, Rindler and Penrose, I think, came up with.  Then she made this massive, staggering, astonishing leap from that to a way to duck around, past, or under the light speed barrier.  It’s really technology that shouldn’t be more than a half-baked theory for another century or more.”

“An Anachronism,” Joshua said, suddenly understanding with perfect clarity what she meant.

“That’s right.  Our ships, our weapons, our communications… none of them really match the level of the twistor drive, but   here we are, not ready, but still heading out to the stars.”

She met his eyes steadily in a way that made him suddenly uncomfortable. 

“Are you ready to go?” she asked in a whisper.

Slowly, sensing the solemnness of the moment, he nodded.

“Not even half of Scouter crews return,” she said, still low.  “One third of the ships never come back and we never know what happened to them.  Of those who do return, those who find and survey new planets, lose anywhere from twenty to eighty percent of the crews.

“Still ready?”

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            He swallowed and thought of his family.  Father only wanted what he thought was best for him.  That’s what he thought he was doing when he took Joshua out of the world of 2105 and brought him up on a farm in the 1940s.  That’s what he thought he was doing when he decided to take Joshua from that life to another world entirely.  Joshua realized then that his father’s timing hadn’t been coincidental.  Father had planned the family’s migration just before Joshua legally became his own man and could chose a different course for his life, this course.  Damn it all, Joshua thought the curse boldly.  He loved his father, but this was his life, not Father’s.  Something new burned inside Joshua then, not the defiance of a thwarted child, nor foolish dreams from which he must be protected, but a pride and certainty that would not be quenched or denied.

“I am ready,” he said.

Diana smiled.  “Then I think I know someone who can help you.”

“So, you want it to be a spaceman, eh?”

Joshua squirmed under the intense scrutiny of the large man’s gaze.  Like many of the people Joshua had seen on the station, Robert Chou didn’t appear to be of any particular race, but showed characteristics of many.  Though the face was alien to his Preservationist world, Joshua decide that with bibs and a seedcorn cap, Chou would have looked the perfect northern Minnesota farmer.  Diana said he was meeting the Director of the Scouters, head man on Terra Two.  Joshua expected someone with the softness of the Adjusters.

“Yes, sir,” Joshua answered. 

“And what qualifications, or special knowledge, do you have?  What areas have you studied?  Why should we take you?” the man asked, taking in Joshua’s farmer garb as he did, with an ill-concealed look of scorn.

Joshua’s life swept over him in a rush and he realized he had nothing, knew nothing, that that could benefit any spacer, nor anyone in this century.  He’d even had to have a strange woman teach him how to use the outhouse.  He, Joshua, was an Anachronism in his own time, his own world.

As he miserably talked of the things he knew; tractors and crops, how to shear a sheep, and milk a cow — all valuable skills in a century long vanished into history — Joshua realized that colonizing was probably the only thing he could do.  No spacers would be able to use him without years more training.

Joshua finished by adding stubbornly, “I’ve read most of the Astounding Stories from the Forties, and I just can’t go back to live in the past when the future I’ve read about is right here.”

Chou’s stern expression vanished.  “I like you.  And unlike you, I have the advantage of having seen your personal profile.  You’d never have been told this, but you’re in the top two percent.”

“Of what?”

He spread his hands.  “Of people.  Even in that environment you were pressed into, you managed to expand your mind and your dreams.  Yet I think you’d never fit in properly with the rest of society — and you know you don’t fit into colonists’ way of life.  So where does that leave you?”

“I’m going to space,” he repeated.

“Good.  Would you like to be a Scouter?”

He stared at the man.  He glanced at Diana who grinned. 

“Why, yes, sir!  But…”

“Wait now,” Chou hastened, dampening Joshua’s eagerness only a touch.  “We know you have the general interest and potential, but we’re neither baby-sitters, nor an agency for coddling misfits.”

Diana choked.

“Well, we don’t coddle them,” Chou said.  “Scouters are misfits, but they’re misfits uniquely suited to the type of exploration and discovering we do.  That means not only aptitude, but training.  You don’t have the training, not even slightly, but I think you have the aptitude.  For one thing, you’re used to working independently.  In fact your personality profile indicates you don’t like crowds, like a lot of space around you, which was actually a given, or your father would never have been allowed to take you into a Preserve like that.  In our business it’s vital.  Yet you have no qualms about confined spaces.  That’s also important, for despite having millions of square kilometers of emptiness around you, you’ll be inside a very small ship.  We’ll test you further, but I’m personally sure that you’re in no way one of the Lower Ninety-eight.”

At his blank expression, Diana interrupted with, “Only two percent of the population is suited to spacing, by intelligence and temperament, and a dozen other characteristics.  We call the rest, the earthpiggies huddling under the atmosphere, the Lower Ninety-eight.”

Joshua’s mouth twitched in grim amusement.  “Two percent is the amount Father said were suited to farming, that the rest couldn’t stand the uncertainty, nor the freedom and all the risks that true freedom has.”

Chou leaned back, thoughtfully biting his lower lip.  “I know right now you’re upset with your father for trying to force you into life as a colonist, but I hope someday you’ll see more in him.”  He leaned forward and his black eyes bore into Joshua.  “My father was a farmer, too.  And it may be odd for you to realize, but some of the same characteristics that make a good spacer make a good farmer.  Despite subsidies and all the other snares the government laid to take away their independence, farmers have always been fiercely free, free enough to work completely for themselves, and by themselves, not dependent on anyone.  That kind of freedom is dangerous and it can be unpleasant and uncomfortable.  But, by God, it’s free, and that’s how spacers — Scouters in particular — must want to be.”

Chou’s words warmed Joshua, the way he’d felt that first Fourth of July after the Great War ended.  It made him want to stand up and sing, or shake his fist at the heavens and dare it to send its worst.  Yes, he’d be a spacer, and though his father may never know it, he’d be honoring him by it too. 

“Why’d you do this for me?” Joshua asked of Diana as she lead him through another secretive maze in Terra Two.  They were on their way to a Scouter ship, his ship.  The search for him was hotter, even the sanctity of the Escher had been violated.  Chou decided that Joshua couldn’t hide on the station even the three days until the colony transport went out, so was rushing the next Scouter departure.

“Passing a favor forward,” Diana answered.  “Someone did the same for me a long time ago.”  She looked at him searchingly.  “You’ll have to decide for yourself if it was a favor or not.”

Joshua thought of that fifty percent of Scouters who didn’t return, of his own marginal qualifications, and quietly asked, “Is the phrase ‘cannon fodder’ still in use?”

She nodded.  “We call ‘em Red Shirts.”  Punching the airlock controls, Diana stood aside so Joshua could go through, to his new life, to new worlds.  The motives didn’t matter.  He knew either Diana or Chou would willingly take his place on this mission if needed, but they’d go, as he did, knowing the risks.  It didn’t bother him.  They boys who went ashore at Omaha Beach had faced worse odds. 

In return for the danger, Joshua was getting the stars.

“Do something for me,” he said as he stepped into the lock.  Pulling the tattered magazine from his bibs, he handed it to Diana.  “Give this to Laura for me.”

The Scoutship Tordre accelerated out from Terra Two station a little more than a day later.  Proudly surveying his cabin was Ship’s Services Assistant Joshua Gustoffson.  He stood in the tiny space feeling himself grow heavier by the minute.  He’d expected the acceleration in this interstellar ship to be exhilarating and breathtaking — literally breathtaking —, like the five gee catapult launch out of atmosphere of the shuttle up to Terra Two.  He expected a bone-crushing, teeth-jarring, boisterous ride out from Earth on this ship’s powerful torch.  This acceleration was somewhat less boisterous than the kitten frolicking around his ankles. 

Not daunted by the placid acceleration, building gradually to a less than awe-inspiring one gee, Joshua gave the kitten a pat, then set about settling into his new home.