unreliable eyes cast it as more or less gray. What kind of reaction was Martine expecting?
“It’s a box,” Dallas said.
Martine shook her head, disagreeing. Up close, Dallas could see the flash of excitement in her eyes. “It has no seams,” she said. “None, Dallas. It’s solid.”
“Machined.”
“Why would someone machine a random box? Besides, Dallas—feel it. It’s warm.”
“Can’t feel anything through the suit.” And if it’s warm, it’s probably radioactive, you damn fool. But Dallas ran a scan—no ionizing radiation, only thermal. And sure enough, the thing’s surface temperature was nearly 37 degrees. Body temperature. Out here in the near-vacuum of Yakutsk’s frigid, terraformless night. “Must be something inside.”
Martine was grinning. “How much do you think he’ll give me for it?”
“Jamyung?” Dallas scoffed. “Not fucking enough. He’ll tell you it’s shit, worth nothing.”
“Then I’ll keep it.”
A vague uneasiness crept up Dallas’s spine. “No, Martine. Get rid of it. Or just drop it. Leave it out here.” That seemed wrong as well, but it felt important to get Martine away from the thing. Dallas clomped back to the hull fragment and wrenched a chunk of polished alloy off of it, extending it toward her. “Take this. He’ll give you good money for this. It’ll keep you in retsina for a week.”
Of course she wasn’t listening. She was tucking the box into her pocket. Dallas shrugged and took the fragment back. “Suit yourself.” But Dallas fought a wave of amorphous dread, and no matter how superstitious it seemed, one thought persisted: That thing shouldn’t be coming back into the dome with us. It shouldn’t be near people at all.
A few hours later they took the surface crawler, heavy with the day’s haul, back to the dome. Martine was chatty, talking about dinner and the game tournament starting at their pub this weekend. She seemed cheerful, almost manic, and Dallas couldn’t stop feeling uneasy. She was herself, only … odd.
Jamyung will buy the box, Dallas thought determinedly. We can go off and have dinner and tomorrow everything will be the same.
But as it turned out, Dallas’s first instinct had been right. “What the fuck is that?” Jamyung asked dismissively, and only Dallas saw the curiosity in the trader’s eyes.
“Don’t know,” Martine said. Dallas had tried to teach her, but she was fucking awful at playing it cool.
“Fifty,” Jamyung said.
Even Martine was outraged at that. “Come on! The thing’s hot. It’s got a power source, at least.”
Jamyung picked up the box and turned it over in his hand. Dallas could see it better, here inside the dome: it was still that nondescript gray, but it had slightly rounded corners and edges, as if it were designed to be held. Something about the proportions gave it a strange sort of grace. Uncharmed, Jamyung tossed it back to Martine. “If it’s a power source, it’s a fucking weak one.” He paused. “Fifty-five.”
“Sixty,” Martine said, just as Dallas said “Eighty.”
Jamyung pinned Dallas with a look. “You guys unionizing on me?”
One for one. All the scavengers were taught that. You started teaming up, you lost all your business fast. But Dallas had to say something. “You know it’s different.”
“Different is useless.” But then Jamyung sighed, and Dallas thought something in the trader might have softened a little. “All right. Seventy. But that’s it, Martine. No more arguing, or you get shit.”
Martine kept her hand outstretched as Jamyung counted out seventy in hard currency into her palm. She set the box back down on the trader’s desk and waved at Dallas. “See you at the pub,” she said, and ran off.
Jamyung had picked up the box again and was turning it over in his hands. He noticed Dallas almost as an afterthought. “You need to stop doing that,” Jamyung said. “She’s good enough without your help.”
“You were ripping her off,” Dallas pointed out.
Jamyung tossed the box on his desk and opened a drawer, pulling out Dallas’s payment. “Sixty was a decent price.”
“Eighty was better.”
Jamyung snorted. “You’re too smart to be a scavenger, Dallas. You should be on my end.”
Dallas wouldn’t have Jamyung’s job for all the currency in that desk. “I like it out there.”
Jamyung shook his head and handed over the money. “Uninhabitable and freezing, except when we’re facing the sun, and then your env suit will melt right into your skin unless you’ve got one of the fancy ones the military are hoarding.”
“Maybe they’ll get the terraformers working again.”
Jamyung shot him a jaundiced look. “You think anybody’s going through all that again, you’re a damn fool. The surface is done. You should come in here and work for me.”
It wasn’t the first time Jamyung had offered, and it wouldn’t be the last time Dallas would refuse. “Bird in the hand,” Dallas said, and took the money.
“Suit yourself,” Jamyung said. “Go beat Martine at whatever bullshit game she’s hauled off the stream this week. And fuck, Dallas, stop telling her what her shit is worth. She learns on her own or she’s no good to me.”
“Okay.” Dallas turned to the door, then stopped. “What are you going to do with it?”
Jamyung’s eyebrows shot up. “What do you care?” And then his expression grew cunning. “You got a buyer?”
“Nope. Just curious.” Dallas lifted a hand. “See you tomorrow.”
But all the way to the pub, currency clanking and waiting to be spent, Dallas thought about that box lying on Jamyung’s desk, and couldn’t shake the feeling that, defunct terraformers or not, the days on Yakutsk were never going to be familiar again.
Budapest
Elena ran in patient circles around the perimeter of Budapest’s largest storage bay, the space around her filled with stacked crates towering like massive city blocks. The bay would be clear in a few hours, after they dropped off the seed stock and dried roots on Yakutsk, but even then there would be little room for exercise beyond running. A freighter, she had learned over the last year, wasn’t like a starship. Starships were designed for sustaining large crews over long-term missions, and generally sported a fair number of human-centric spaces. Freighters were rarely out longer
