The Great Hydration

“Doesn’t it bother you that K&B’s licence to operate has been revoked?” he asked. “Technically that ends your bonded status. You don’t have to do any of this.”

She snorted. “A fat lot the Stellar Commission means out here.”

He could see she was satisfied with her lot. Generally speaking Krabbe & Bouche had little to worry about as regards staff loyalty, the whole position of bonded employees being legally ambiguous. A bonded person was a semi-slave, required to obey his employers without question. That was apt to remain the case in practice—if not in law—even when the employer was in breach of his obligations.

Roncie Northrop had tried to go by the book. Learning of the revocation order the Stellar Commission had issued after Krabbe & Bouche transgressed the Non-Interference Law on Sesquielta, he had jumped ship. It was his philosophy not to back losers. And in any case he had come to dislike the rapacious partners he served.

He had reckoned without Boris Bouche’s meticulous point-twisting manipulations. At that time they had been docked in Durovia, where it was difficult to recruit trained people. Northrop had not formally applied to be released from his bond; Bouche posted him as an absconder.

On Durovia the proctors followed procedure unimaginatively. The police had found Northrop and despite his protests had brought him straight back to the ship. He had been in the brig ever since.

“You do know there’s a Pursuit Order?” he persisted.

“Oh sure, and they’ll send a ship and find us too. Anyway, so what?”

She was right. The Stellar Commission’s casual way of doing things meant it was unlikely the Enterprise would ever be tracked down.

He began raking fried rice into his mouth with quick motions. To be fair, Krabbe & Bouche probably weren’t a lot worse than most gogetters. All of them hated the Non-Interference Law; profit was all they cared about. Provided they went far enough into deep space they could flout the law for long enough to make it worthwhile.

“There, that’s better,” Joanita said after her tidying-up efforts. “You live like a pig, Roncie.”

“I’m penned up like one.”

“It’s for your own good, Roncie. Bouche could have punished you. Instead he jut put you under restriction.”

“For K & B’s good is what you mean!” Northrop protested plaintively. “Bouche had me thrown in here so I wouldn’t get a chance to renounce my bond. Not that he’d have taken a blind bit of notice if I did—that’s why I jumped ship in the first place. By the way, are we still in orbit?”

“Yes, over the little yellow planet. There’s been a geological report.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “I hear there might be work. You’ll be needed.”

Northrop frowned thoughtfully. As a nuclear engineer he was on Castaneda’s geological team. “So they have nuclear power on this planet? They want help with some geo-engineering?”

She giggled. “You could say that. Don’t worry, pretty boy. It’s all out of your hands, anyway.”

He dipped the golden spoon into the bowl of marsala. “Here, come and share this with me.”

She came closer, bending as he lifted the spoon to her. He slipped his hand up the inside of her well-tensioned thigh. Beneath her short smock she wasn’t wearing anything.

The yellow cream was thick on her lips. She licked it off, and allowed him to tug her down beside him. They ate the marsala together, mouth to mouth, lips twining, passing it back and forth. By the time it was gone the work-smock was up to her shoulders. He panted as he swallowed the last of the sweet.

“Wait a sec,” she said. She jumped up, took a pace and waved her hand. The light over the vidcamera blinked on.

“Something more for your library,” she grinned as she rejoined him.

Northrop didn’t say anything. Where his mouth was, he couldn’t say anything.

Castaneda, the leader of the Geological Team, entered the conference room accompanied by Runkfoh, his assistant. He carried a sheaf of papers under his arm. His florid features looked troubled.

Krabbe turned, pleased by his early arrival. “Good work, Castaneda. What’s the news?”

For answer Castaneda laid out a large map on the table in the centre of the room. Krabbe and Bouche both came to look at it. It was a geological surveyor’s map of the planet, done on a Mercator projection.

“Much what we expected, Partner Krabbe, sir. The planet below us—”

“Tenacity,” Krabbe interrupted.

“Sir?”

“Tenacity. That’s what we decided to call it.”

“Yes, sir. Well, uh, Tenacity is, in its own small way, a freak planet. A small enough planet—smaller than Mars. It has an unusually thin crust, and beneath that, the mantle is in layers. The top layer is also unusual: made up of a porous rock of a structure I confess I haven’t come across before. On any other world it would have got compressed by now and would have lost its porosity. It also contains fracture zones, similar to the tectonic plates found in the crust of many larger planets.”