Hogan turned to the Fast Eddie's master, but Potter felt his attention on himself. "Wayforth Station is a hellhole; we both know that. It, and places like it, exist only because they sit at intersections of Alderson Points. The CoDominium has written: Wherever two or more Alderson Jump Points are gathered together, there also am I."
Potter shifted uncomfortably; he was not a very religious man, but he was pretty sure Farrow was, and he resented Hogan's sarcastic blasphemy in the presence of Fast Eddie's master. Hogan's attitude might also be taken as subversive by certain overzealous CoDo persons.
"Wayforth sits at the center of six such jump Points," Hogan went on, leaning forward over his desk and steepling his fingers. "That makes it valuable, commercially and strategically. It connects to several of those Gold Rush worlds where all the other Survey Teams are even now making maps for the CoDo city planners and the corporate industrial developers. Earth-like worlds, easy to get to; prime stuff for the factions that can afford them, CoDo or otherwise. As for this moon, the Company wants to be sure it's not missing out on some lucrative mining potential; the Universities are still whining about a wildlife preserve; even the religious nuts are rallying under a common banner-Harmonies, they've started calling themselves-for a place to worship away from CoDo interference in their affairs. An out-of-the-way place like this moon appeals to all sorts of people by the very fact of its lack of easy access." Hogan leaned back, his bulk making the chair creak even in Wayforth's low gravity. "But there is another value to out-of-the-way places, too, gentlemen," he finished.
Potter had sighed. "I see," he had said, and he did.
Out-of-the-way places were for putting things out of the way, and the things that were most often put out of the way in the CoDominium were people. Earth was still crowded, and the better colony worlds were taken, or their lobbyists were still able to resist forced refugee assignment in the Grand Senate.
And you had to put them somewhere, he knew.
Enter the CoDominium's Bureau of Relocation, BuReloc for short, and arguably the hardest-working bureaucracy in history. Bureloc moved product like there was no tomorrow, and its product was colonists. Sometimes the colonists were willing, more often they were not. But willing or not, they moved.
"Poor bastards," Potter had said, as he and Farrow signed the contract for the Survey order.
"Don't worry about your crew," Hogan had said. "Better they have something to do for two years than sit around idle."
But Potter hadn't meant the crew of the Fast Eddie. He had read the discovery team's preliminaries on the moon of the Byers' Star gas giant, and he had been thinking about the people who would someday have to live there.
Now the Fast Eddie had arrived; the crew began the long preparations that would culminate, however reluctantly, with the first extended visit of men to her surface, and Potter's mood shifted into the low gear of indigestion.
"Pack your long underwear, boys," Owens pronounced, and transferred the last of the orbital survey data to the Fast Eddie's shuttle computers. He turned at a chuckle from Connolly. "What?"
"Oh, just thinking about all the things people have said wouldn't happen 'til hell froze over." The Officer pointed to a screen rippling with ground images and overlaid with environmental data. "They're all down there waiting for us right now."
"Cheery thought."
"All right, knock it off," Potter's admonition was quiet, almost weary; but not without a tinge of sincerity. Cat's Eye's moon was a NEW PLACE, words that filled the captain's mind in large block letters, black as death. Too many names were entered in Wayforth's Mariner's Hall as having never returned from NEW PLACES, and Potter had no intention of adding any more familiar names to that list, least of all his own. His temper was short, anyway; it was no longer possible to avoid going and speaking to Miller.
The eighth man of the Fast Eddie's complement was not, strictly speaking, a crew member. Robert Miller was listed on the Fast Eddie's first-ever passenger manifest as a "CoDominium Xeno-Geologist. While not welcomed by anyone since the day Hogan had forced him upon the Fast Eddie's crew, Miller had made himself as unobtrusive as possible during the long flight from Wayforth, earning a grudging acceptance from the others that was best described as belligerent neutrality. Besides a gift for chess, he contributed nothing to the ship's activities and took what Potter considered to be more than his share of food and oxygen; Miller was an irredeemable athlete, given to spending eight hours or more in the Fast Eddie's centrifuge ring and eating like a horse afterward.
Half a G seemed never to be enough for Miller, and Potter had three times found the rotation setting increased beyond its long-term design limits. He'd finally ordered Liu to program a lock-out on the ring's controls, and Miller had sullenly acquiesced.
Gripping the handholds above his seat, Potter pulled himself up and kicked off in the direction of the bridge door, continuing the zero-G acrobatics as he proceeded down the corridor to the living quarters module of the Fast Eddie. At the last door he floated to a stop and tapped the button.
"Yes." The voice from within was no less flat for being filtered through a wall speaker.
Don't say "come in" or anything civil, Potter thought. Asshole. "We're taking the shuttle down in about an hour. Bring your gear and come to the launch bay when you're rea-
Potter was cut off by the rapidly opened hatch, revealing in all his glory Robert Miller, Company Man. Miller was already wearing E-Suit underwear and had a golfbagsized canvas carry-all slung over his shoulder. "Excuse me," he said as he moved past Potter into the corridor.
Potter noticed the slippery grace with which the man moved as he insinuated himself into the gangway and moved off in the direction of the launch bay. "Insinuated" himself, Potter thought. That's a good word for it, that's what he's done since the first day we laid eyes on him.
"He's a part of your contract." Hogan was adamant.
"Then the contract's broken; no non-union, non-essential civilian personnel on Survey vessels, for their own safety and that of the crew." Potter felt his blood pressure rising; he was doing all of Farrow's fighting for him again, and it always gave him a migraine.
"You'll bear no responsibility for him."
"Damn right, 'cause he's not going to be aboard."
Hogan sighed deeply. "Potter, there are Company operatives aboard every ship in the Survey Fleet. You and I both know that, so let's cut the bull, shall we? At least this way you know who yours is. Miller goes with you."
"What the hell for, Hogan? We're a Survey vessel, we can't file any claims if something valuable is found anyway."
"You're forgetting the most important thing about the Byers' Star moon. Its value as a dumping ground for undesirables. What happens if those undesirables turn over a rock one day and find a vein of gold?"
"You've got a lot of rich undesirables, so what?"
"Money is commerce, and commerce means representation in the CoDominium Senate."
Potter rubbed his eyes in weariness. "Rich undesirables who vote, right, I get it. Can't be having that, now, can we?"
Hogan shook his head and pressed a button on his desk. "I'm glad we understand each other. Eve, send in Mister Miller."
When Miller entered, Hogan had introduced him to Potter and Farrow, each man had nodded, and none of them had spoken another word to each other. With few exceptions, their first meeting with Miller that day had set the tone for all Potter's future conversations with the man. Which, he considered, watching Miller's back receding down the corridor, was just the way he liked it.