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Geoff stepped out onto the commuter pad with his bike. 25 Phocaea's day lasted about ten hours, and the sun was below the horizon right now. But the lights blazing on the disassembler warehouses made it hard for his eyes to dark-adapt. He tweaked his light filter settings-if you wanted a good harvest, you needed your night vision-and fumbled his way toward Amaya and the others, who were pushing their bikes toward the launch ramps. Then his big brother Carl radioed him and waved. Geoff sent his buddies on, left his bike on the pad, and bounded over to Carl.
By the time he got there, he could see well enough to note that Carl wore a pony bottle and one of the cheap, bulky, standard-issue suits they provided at the disassembler and storage warehouses. Which meant he'd sneaked out to watch the delivery. Geoff was surprised. This was about the only misdemeanor Geoff had ever known him to commit.
"Hey. What are you doing off work?"
"Hey! You nearly missed it." Carl gestured into the inky sky, at the vast ice mountain that loomed overhead.
"I was busy."
Carl eyed him suspiciously, but Geoff knew his brother couldn't see his expression very well through their visors, and didn't elaborate. Carl hadn't heard about the bug-turd skeletons yet. But he would, and would freak if he learned Geoff had been responsible.
"Hurry!" Carl said, and set off. Geoff bounded after him, to the rim of the crater-leaping high in the low gravity, for the sheer joy of it-over to where the last of 25 Phocaea's remaining ice stores were.
It made Geoff's neck hairs bristle, how much ice filled the sky. The ice was a deep blue-green, with swirls of ruddy umber and streaks and lumps of dirt. Mostly methane. A rich take. Water ice was good-necessary, in fact, to replenish their air and water stores and provide raw hydrogen for the fusion plant-but methane ice was much more important. Kuiper objects always had plenty of water, and methane was needed for the bugs that made the air they breathed, the food they ate, the hydrogen feed for their power plant, and everything else.
The tugs' rockets flamed at the ice mountain's edges, slowing its approach, but it was still moving fast enough that he could not believe they would get it stopped in time to keep from knocking this asteroid right out of orbit. 25 Phocaea was only seventy-five kilometers across-it didn't take a lot of mass to shove it around.
The mountain grew and grew, and grew-till the brothers scrambled back reflexively. But as always, by the time the pilots blew the nets off, the ice mountain was moving no faster than a snail crawl. The ice touched down right in the crater's center. The cheers of his buddies and the other rocketbikers rang in Geoff's headset as the inverted crags of the mountain's belly touched the crater floor. The ground began to tremble and buck and the brothers flailed their arms, trying not to lose their balance.
Geoff whooped. "We'll make a fortune! Best ice harvest ever!"
There was a rule: what came back down belonged to the cluster. What made it into orbit around the asteroid was yours-if you could catch it.
"I knew you were going to say that," Carl said. "You always say that."
"That's because it's always true. Anyway, I've got to go. Don't want to spin wry and miss the first wave of ejecta."
"I'll never get why you're so into ice slinging."
"It beats trash slinging!"
"Hey," Carl broadcast, as Geoff bounded back toward his waiting rocketbike, "this job is just to pay tuition. Someday I'll be a ship captain. You need to take the long view."
"Burn hot," Geoff retorted. Burn hot; you might not be around tomorrow to enjoy whatever pleasure you've been putting off. Carl had always taken the long view and laid his plans carefully. Geoff had no patience for that. His bug-turd skeleton project was as long-term as he was willing to go. He leapt onto his bike, and raced to the far side of the crater.
Amaya, Kam, and Ian were already space-borne. He signaled to Amaya and she gave him her trajectory. Then he watched the spectacle of the ice mountain's collapse into the crater, while waiting his turn at the base of the ramp.
Down it kept coming, all that ice, onto the remains of their prior shipment. It tumbled out over the crater bed in an avalanche, collapsing on itself, flinging ice shrapnel. Geoff, waiting in line with the other bikers, gripped his handlebars, raced his engine, impatient. Some of the ejecta were beginning to rain back down; more was propelled into orbit.
His turn-finally! He raced up the ramp, dodging flying ice shards, as the ice mountain finished settling. He whooped again as he reached orbital velocity. The ramp arced upward and then fell away-he was space-borne. He fired his rockets and caught up with Amaya. They spread their nets and got started harvesting ice.