Freelance On The Galactic Tunnel Network by E. Foner (best beach reads of all time TXT) 📗

come even if you were a notorious axe murderer. Oh, and the report from EarthCent Intelligence said that your credit is good.”

“That’s the most important thing in my world. Anybody can get into a drunken bar brawl on some alien station and end up with a criminal record, but good credit has to be earned.”

“Is that how you got your nose broken? In a bar brawl?”

“No comment,” Larry said, self-consciously touching his imperfectly healed nose.

“Are you married?”

“Do I look married? No, don’t open your eyes.” He paused a moment, considering his answer. “I was married. It didn’t work out. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” Georgia said cautiously. “Family?”

“I’m from a trader family. My parents still live on their ship, and I have a brother who was a trader until he married some grounder he met on a Verlock open world and went native. My uncle, dad’s brother, is a trader too, and I have a couple of cousins who work a two-man ship together. My grandparents settled on Void station when my grandmother had enough of living a quarter of her life in Zero-G, but my grandfather still owns a ship, and he takes consignment deliveries to keep a hand in. How about you?”

“My parents are crazy,” Georgia said bluntly. “My father insisted that everything that ever went wrong in his life was the fault of an alien conspiracy, and my mother won’t even accept that the Stryx exist. I grew up in a sort of a commune of squatters on an abandoned college campus, and nobody talked about the outside world because it would always end in an argument.”

“So how does your mom explain the tunnel network?”

“She doesn’t, and even though you could see the space elevator from our kitchen window on a clear day, she pretended it wasn’t there.”

“How about the moon landing?”

“Nope, but at least I can understand her on that one. It is kind of hard to believe that people made it to the moon all those years ago without alien help.”

“Our scientists used to be pretty handy with rockets, probably because they made good weapons, but they’re next to useless for commercial space travel due to the fuel-to-weight ratio,” Larry said. “Do you mind if I hop on the stationary bike while we talk? I’m used to exercising at least six hours a day in Zero-G and I feel like I’m being lazy just floating here.”

“You’re going to ride the bike upside-down?”

“I told you, there is no such thing in space. Tell me when you feel ready to try one of the machines and I’ll help you get hooked up. And if you think you’re done with that sick-up bag, I’ll put it in the trash.”

“Take it,” Georgia said, relinquishing her death grip on the sealable pouch that contained the barely-digested remnants of her lunch. “Why did you insist that we eat before leaving when you knew there was a good chance I’d be sick?”

“Having something to throw up beats the dry heaves.” He double-checked that the bag was properly sealed, and then gently shoved off the back of her chair to propel himself to the locker set aside for the trash. There he placed the sick-bag into a larger garbage sack and used a short piece of elastic to tie it shut. After putting the garbage back in the locker, he pushed off for the exercise bike.

“I thought spaceships all had disposal chutes,” Georgia commented.

“You were watching? You must really be feeling better then. And bigger space ships do have disposal chutes but they don’t dump into space. On Stryx stations and alien orbitals, everything is either recycled or atomized, which is also a form of recycling because the atoms can be used for something. Traders don’t have a lot of waste, mainly food packaging, and we have to pay to get rid of it when we’re docked or parked.”

“I always assumed the trash got dumped in space.”

“Aliens have fought wars over littering, it’s nothing we can afford to fool around with,” Larry told her. He slipped his feet through the pedal straps and fastened the waist harness to keep his butt on the seat. “Besides, it wouldn’t work in the tunnel. The way it’s been explained to me, even if I cycled the trash out through the airlock it would travel right along with us. Then we’d get in trouble with traffic control at the other end.”

“Traffic control? I thought the tunnels were just open.”

“Seriously? It’s a toll system, though it all works through the Stryx-supplied ship controllers so it’s not like we have to stop and pay. Earth is just a probationary tunnel network member so we get the option to go shares rather than paying a flat rate. All of the traders I know work that way.”

“So you’re in business with the Stryx?” Georgia asked, carefully tilting her head back until she could see where Larry was pedaling away like he was climbing a hill in first gear.

“Nothing so grand. I use the mini-register to keep track of my business, cash is on the honor system, and the Stryx traffic controllers access that information and debit their percentage when I enter a tunnel.”

“You really are upside-down, you know.”

“If you’re well enough to watch me pedaling, you should try to drink some water. Once you’re rehydrated, a little exercise will make you feel even better.”

“Can you help me get to my food locker?”

“Try it yourself and I’ll come to the rescue if you get stranded. Moving around in weightlessness is easier than it looks, almost too easy. The trick is not to push off anything too hard because you have to be able to stop yourself without bouncing when you get there.”

“Is that what all the ropes are for? I thought they were pull cords for some kind of emergency