them?" Susan Turner demanded. Her tone was a little shrill, and it made Maya wince. The opening of the Frenn wormhole gate had really set her off this week.
"Some people do want them here, you know that." He took a sip of coffee and set the cup on his lap tray. "You realize, since humans are logged onto the Galactic Net we can't interfere with travel routes through our systems. And we shouldn't discourage visitors."
"Who says we shouldn't?"
"My point is nobody wants to. It's been thirty years now and there haven't been any problems."
"Oh, you would say that." She glared at him. "You're an officer on a Company ship. You travel through those damned wormholes."
"Just the one that brought me here. These colonies wouldn't be possible without it, remember? Humans built that one."
"With alien science!" She slapped the floor for emphasis.
He gave her a condescending sneer. "Science is science."
"Well, you need that infernal G-Net to utilize the things, don't you? Why is that, hmm?" Without waiting for an answer she added, "I should think the Company would be better off developing some sort of faster-than-light drive."
He shrugged. "Not possible, Sis."
"According to G-Net propaganda."
"According to Einstein, more than a hundred years before humans found the G-Net. You've heard of him, right?"
"Einstein didn't lay down all those, those damn decrees!"
Maya felt an urge to join the conversation. There were in fact some simple ground rules for accessing the G-Net, minimal laws administered more or less automatically by the AIs that purportedly ran it. Chief among them was the regulation against conquest. Potential invaders would not be allowed through the wormhole gates. Surely that was a good thing?
Too bad it didn't apply to Uncle Charlie's ship like it ought to.
She bit back that remark, and then thought of other occasions when she'd tried to join in, and decided not to bother.
Actually, she'd heard enough. This whole debate was old ground. "Mom, I'm going over to Jason's now, okay?"
"Certainly, dear. Be home by dinner."
"I hear you." Maya rose from the plump cushion on which she had been sprawling and crossed the smooth stone floor of the common area to her curtained alcove. The Turner household, like most in the colony, was tunneled underground, and space was at a premium. Cushions and pallets took the place of chairs and beds, while chests and boxes did duty for cabinets and closets. Maya took her outdoors suit from its hook and wriggled into it.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror. A slender brown-skinned girl with long black hair stared back at her.
Her mouth was too wide and her nose was too big, but she thought her large dark eyes might be attractive. She stuck out her tongue at the apparition and it reciprocated.
She left her alcove, skirted the common area, entered the foyer shaft, and then climbed metal rungs set in rock to the airlock booth. She slid its trapdoor shut and donned her breath mask while the compressor cycled. Moments later she stepped outdoors.
The low keening wind blew clouds of the glittering diamond dust at a brisk pace beneath the dark indigo sky. Delicate silicon growths spread their fragile, gossamer limbs toward the heavens, scintillating with captured sunlight. Their crystalline beauty tugged at her heart.
They wouldn't get much higher, though; soon the winds would blow them down again.
The noontime temperature was just above freezing. That made it a balmy day for this part of New Mars, though the colony was set close to the equator. In any event, her suit kept her warm. She wasn't bothered; New Mars was home. She could scarcely remember Earth.
Adjacent to the Turner's airlock booth was a black plastic storage shed. She took her powercycle out of its charging stall and set off down the unpaved track that served her family and their immediate neighbors for a road, pumping the pedals at first to help the little motors get up to speed.
She wondered if Mom was having some sort of breakdown. Really, she kept having the same conversation over and over again—with Dad, with the Harbinsons, and now with Uncle Charlie. The Harbinsons were too polite to call her a fool, for which she was grateful, but it was plainly what they thought.
But she wasn't a fool, that was the thing. Susan Turner was a loving wife and mother, a hard worker, and a capable homestead manager. But on the subject of aliens she was overwhelmed by hysteria.
Maya didn't think the Frenn were all that intimidating. Actually they reminded her of Jiminy Cricket in that classic Disney cartoon, sprightly little insectile dwarves. As interstellar distances went, they were neighbors; their civilization's suns, Epsilon Eridani and Epsilon Indi, were right next door to Tau Ceti. You could even say they had a better claim on New Mars and New Venus than humans.
Even so, they weren't interested in colonizing the two worlds. At this point, they wouldn't be permitted to do so anyway unless humans were amenable—under those regulations Mom so despised—but they were definitely interested in trade.
Actual, beneficial trade—not like the Yulians, who were sort of galactic con artists. Maya thought the Frenn’s overtures would be welcome, despite Susan Turner's objections.
She caught sight of a bright star moving slowly across the daylight sky. The Frenn vessel?
Not this time of day! No, that would be Uncle Charlie's ship, the Enforcer.
She shivered. The Tau Ceti colonists were in much more danger from Company goons than any sort of alien threat, if the talk of independence from Earth kept at its present level.
2
When she reached the Harbinson homestead she dismounted her powercycle and left it by their front gate.
The twice-yearly cyclones made it difficult to keep permanent structures erected on New Mars, but Edgar Harbinson wanted his fences, by God, and rebuilt them each spring and fall with help from his son, using an engineered strain of hard bamboo imported from New Venus. It was a distinct source of annoyance to poor Jason.
She spied poor Jason working in the south field and strode out to meet him.
He was a lanky, freckled lad with tousled reddish hair and a perpetual grin. He greeted her with warm pleasure. "Good to see you, Maya!" His eyes twinkled. "I've got something to show you in my room today."
"Oh, you do, huh? What is it?"
"Help me finish out here first, would you?"
"All right."
Agriculture on New Mars involved planting crops in ditches covered with clear, flexible sheeting. Buried hoses of the same tough material carried streams of scalding water that kept the plantings warm—"warm" to the genetically designed crops being merely defined as "above freezing"—and seeped through cooling outlets to irrigate them.
Jason was trying to track down a pressure leak in one of the hoses, using some sort of black detector box. He was focused with scowling concentration on its tiny readout. Maya rolled her eyes in amusement, and then started looking around.
She soon spotted the source of the trouble. She touched him on the shoulder. "There." She pointed.
He looked up. "Well, I'll be damned."
"I don't doubt it."
A plastic bubble frosted with condensation, puffs of steam spurting from its edges, pulsed above a section of cultivated trench.
Maya sniffed through her breath mask. "What have you got planted down there? Smells like stew! Your vegetables are cooking."
Jason laughed. "I hope it's just vegetables, I'd hate it if one of the squirrels got caught down there. Carrots, celery, and onions. And cabbage, because my mom likes it."
She sniffed again. "Cabbage sort of stinks, though, doesn't it?"
"Mom likes it," Jason repeated loyally. He surveyed the damage as they walked toward the offending area. "I brought the kit to patch this. But shut off the steam, do you mind?"
"Where's the cutoff valve for this section?"
"They're marked with painted blue rocks." Jason pointed. "There."
Maya smiled. "Like it says in the Farmer's Almanac."
&nb
sp; `"Yeah, Dad loves that book. He's gonna be happy we fixed this. Thanks for finding the leak."
"With my eyes I found it. No fancy detector needed."
"Sure, I bet your family uses burning wood to power your irrigation boiler, too."
Maya grinned. "If there was any wood to burn it would sure save money."
They made the repair in short order.
"All right, we're done here," said Maya. "Now, you say you have something to show me?"
"Sure do. Come on."
"Any use my asking what it is?"
"Just come see. I'd rather show than tell."
They made their way to the Harbinson's foyer shaft, descended, and went to Jason's alcove. It was much like Maya's, but it bore the stamp of Jason's personality; he had a penchant for larger-than-life portraits of historical figures printed out on paper and taped to the walls. Che Guevara, Muddy Waters, and Roger Goode all stared down benignly.
Jason sat at his desk and said, "computer on". On the wall across from him his holoscreen toggled from a tropical aquarium loop to monitor status.
On his desktop was an old-fashioned touch keypad he had gotten from God only knew where. An actual wire sprouted from it and snaked across the surface to plop out of sight. His fingers flew across the thing with practiced ease.
"Misplace your pointer?" asked Maya.
"This interface doesn't use a pointer. If I were accessing on a hand card I couldn't just touch the screen, either. Couldn't even use a mouse here, if I had one."
"A what?"
"Never mind." The holoscreen lit with the flat image of a bright yellow disc against a dark background. Black characters chased each other across its glowing