to prepared foods from the refectory after having lived primarily for years on cuy and chicken and stuff from their own greenhouses.
He looked at the candy fondly, then put it in Zora’s outstretched hand. “Mama, what does ‘big’ mean?”
“What? It means not small. What are you talking about?”
“I thought it meant like when some lady is going to have a baby.”
Oh no. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I thought maybe you might have a baby in there.” He patted her tummy shyly.
“No.” Her stomach twisted. “No baby.”
Sekou dug in the pocket of the jumpsuit and brought out a tiny action figure, a boy in an environment suit. “But Daddy said—”
“You shouldn’t be listening when Daddy and Mama are talking privately.” But would there be any privacy once they had settled in to Borealopolis? Even the best paid city hires lived in quarters not much bigger than the passenger compartment of their rover. Speaking of which, they would probably have to sell the rover. What use do city people have for such a thing?
“Sorry.” His voice was very soft.
She had some credit, and she noticed the holding area had a tea dispenser. “Would you like some mint tea? I think they can put sweetener in it.”
She figured she had lied to Marcus, it would be a bad thing to lie to Sekou, young though he was.
When they had gotten their tea, which did indeed come with sweetener, she sat opposite Sekou on the little bench and then, in a rush of affection, moved over and grabbed him in a hug.
“Mama was going to have a baby, but something bad happened. You know about radiation, about the accident.”
“Yes. I’ve been thinking. I wanted to ask you something.”
She had been poised with a careful explanation, but Sekou’s question threw her. “About what?”
“About my camera.”
“The camera.” She was momentarily at a loss, and then, before he opened his mouth, all in a rush, she guessed what he was about to say.
“Mama, the camera works because light turns the chemical into something different, so it looks black after you develop it.”
She dropped her hands and stared at him.
“Mama, radiation comes in different kinds. Light is one kind. But the radiation from our nuke, that would turn the chemical all black too.”
She began to giggle.
“Mama, the picture took. So there wasn’t any radiation.”
Zora’s giggles shook her body until, if the fetus was developed enough to be aware, it would have gotten the giggles too. She fingertipped on her com and called Marcus.
* * * *
How had Valkiri done it? How had she ruined every sensor and monitor in the whole hab and pharm?
They never found Valkiri, of course. But when they went back to the Pharm—cautiously, of course, because who trusts the reasoning of a child?—they found Valkiri—they couldn’t believe the other two had abetted her—had dusted the surfaces of every sensor, including the one in Marcus’s environment suit, but not her own, with Thorium 230 powder It had been imported from earth for some early experiments in plant metabolism. It was diabolic.
It cost a lot of credit to have everything checked out. Several other habs that had been contaminated made vague threats about suing the Smythes for not notifying them, as if they could have known any earlier what happened. But the fact that Sekou (Sekou!) had solved the mystery and pushed back the specter of death made the other Pharmholders back down.
Ultimately, Zora and Marcus didn’t trust the work of the decon crew. They had to do their own investigation. Nothing else would convince them it was okay. The sensors had to be replaced, and that wasn’t cheap. But they had a home. They had a place for Sekou to play, and grow.
Sekou didn’t get his camera back from the municipality of Borealopolis, but Marcus traded a packet of new freeze-resistant seeds for an antique chemistry set, and that seemed to satisfy the boy.
Why had Valkiri been willing to make her victims homeless but not actually murder them? Zora never figured it out. Marcus said it was because she was afraid that if she had really breached the nuke, their home corp would have charged her with murder. Or maybe she was afraid she herself would be in danger if she sabotaged the nuke.
Or maybe she had some ethics, said Marcus. He always said things like that. Seeing both sides. Zora found it exasperating. Ultimately, though, it made him lovable.
* * * *
The baby, a girl, was pretty and small, always quite small, for her age, but with big eyes favoring Zora’s and a sly smile favoring Marcus’s. Zora treasures a digital image of the two children, boy and girl, taken soon after the birth.
But Marcus prefers the quite deft drawing Sekou did of the family, though of course, as the artist, he put himself in the picture wielding a camera that by that time rusted in a crime lab in Borealopolis.
FOOD FOR FRIENDSHIP, by E. C. Tubb
“The trouble with adventure,” said Robeson feelingly, “is that it isn’t what it’s made out to be.”
“Is anything?” Smyth, he insisted on being different, stared wistfully at the globular fruits suspended in the branches of the tree beneath which they rested.
“No,” admitted Robeson. “And there you have the whole trouble with civilization. Adventure is a snare, a delusion, a tarnished bauble, a lying promise of freedom. Strangled in the economic rat-race of his own world, a man sells up, buys a ticket to some distant place, and ventures on the sea of space in search of the road to adventure.” He was raising his metaphors but didn’t let it worry him. “And then what happens? He finds himself worse off than before, caught in a vicious trap baited by his own necessity. Adventure! I’m sick of it!”
“I’m hungry,” said Smyth.
“So am I,” said Robeson. Together, they stared at the succulent fruits hanging just above their heads.
They didn’t eat them, of course; they knew better. It wasn’t morals that stopped them from reaching up and helping themselves. They had long since discarded such troublesome concepts as to the sanctity of other people’s property. They didn’t eat the fruits for the simple reason that, if they did, they would die in a most unpleasant and distressing manner.
“The Tortures of Tantalus had nothing on this place.” With difficulty Robeson looked away from the fruits. “I can think of few things worse than for a starving man to be stranded on Mirab IV.”
“Or Sirus II.”
“Or Vega VIII.”
“Or on Lochis, Mephisto, Wendis or Thrombo.” Smyth rolled the words as if uttering a curse. “Or, in fact, on most planets of this
