Page 40 of Full Speed to a Crash Landing

A rover goes into theotherareas, the places where landhoppers cover their windows with vid screens to block tourists’ views so they don’t witness the way pollution has soiled the homeworld we all share if you go back far enough in all of our ancestry. Rovers risk the radiation sickness and the pollution and the mutated wildlife and everything else to find things to sell.

And nothing sells as well as viable plant life. Gold and diamonds are on every world, and some of the other planets have gemstones even rarer than the ones Earth has. A rock looks like a rock anywhere; some are just shinier than others.

But nothing I’ve ever tasted before tastes like the peach I just had.

Luxury food.

I’ve never been rich enough to consider that a possibility. I can barely wrap my head around it.

“I haven’t seen her in a long time,” Rian says, and it take a moment for my mind to go back to our conversation, to his sister, the rover. From his face, I can guess that maybe she went out on an expedition and didn’t come back. I don’t want to ask, though. It doesn’t feel right to take more than he’s giving right now.

But it’s a story I know well. Everyone on Earth knows someone who wanted something more, something better than the little bubbles of livable but inescapable life. Some of us, like me and Magnusson, go to space. Some, like Saraswati’s parents, emigrate.

But we all know someone who decided to risk it in the unprotected lands. And we all know someone who never came back from that.

“It’s not too late,” Rian tells me. “I...Ican’ttell you more about what this mission is for, but you deserve to know that what you did today was important.”

He’s dropping clues so heavy, it’s like he’s begging me to guess the top-secret intel. “I know the drive I rescued is full of some sort of important data,” I say, giving him this much. “Now I’m thinking it’s linked to fixing up Earth?” I raise my eyebrows at him. Rian betrays no expression, his face perfectly blank—which is the answer I’m seeking.

“Oh,” I breathe. “Oh. Thatisclever.”

“What is?” he asks.

“It’s not just the data that’s important. It’s the ship’s path.Roundabout,I mean. It wasn’t just going on an out-of-the-way route—it was going to an out-of-the-way planet. And it’s not just data, is it?” I jump up and start pacing the room. Rian watches me as I take three strides, turn, take three more. I stop abruptly, staring at Rian and tapping my chin, considering.

He keeps the poker face, but his eyes are sparkling in anticipation.

“TheRoundabout’s path was going to take it to a world without atmosphere, one of the remote planets,” I continue, watching his face carefully for a flicker of acknowledgement that I’m right. “If this mission is linked to nature...you’re testing something that will clean up the pollution or purify the air or something like that for Earth, and you tried to send the drive to a manufacturing world that has no atmo so it could be tested...” I muse out loud, taking up the puzzle pieces Rian’s giving me and sifting them into the picture he wants me to see, the one he thinks I didn’t know about already.

“The other thing you’re looking for, the other piece, it’s notjustthe key to the cryptex drive. It’s...” He doesn’t flinch, so I have to pretend to guess. “A climate-cleaner of some sort. A prototype. Maybe a chemical combination or some sort of filtration system. I’ve heard of some companies working on things like that. No, it’d have to be smaller. Perhaps a new type of nanobot? And that data on the drive is needed to program it and test it in some off-world facility without a water cycle and atmosphere before releasing it on Earth...”

He’s good. He doesn’t even show an ounce of reaction.

But IknowI’m right.

Rian rolls back his shoulders and stands. “Like I said, the work we’re doing here is important. For a lot of people.”

“But you’re not going to tell me what it is.”

Rian smiles; he knows I’ve guessed correctly. “I can’t. It’s a government secret.”

“And that’s why it’s doomed,” I snap back, the edge in my voice so sharp that even I’m surprised by it.

He stops, his expression slipping back into that placid mask. “Doomed?”

“You’re government. TheHalifaxisn’t, I guess you commandeered it, but you’re in the government. That’s why you’re in charge of the mission, not the captain. And if this whole operation isgovernmental. . .”

“I didn’t take you for an anarchist,” Rian says dryly.

“I’m not. I mean, the government’sfine, I don’t care, it’s just that...if you think the government can handle something as major as finding a solution to the environmental disaster that is Earth, you’re deluded.” I can’t help but laugh, even when his face darkens.

But surely, he has to acknowledge that the United Galactic System is too big to do anything worthwhile. Small-scale, a society needs rules to function. But the further from the community, the more tangled the lines of authority get. The more chances for corruption or, worse, apathy. It’s how Earth lost control of sovereign nations to global tourism boards. Used to be, laws came from one city that affected a whole country, then laws came from one planet that affected all the countries, and now things are coming from whole different worlds that affect all the rest. And the end result is a fucking mess by the time it trickles down. One government to oversee four worlds, each law passed down to increasingly distant micromanaging levels of rule before it goes into effect? Doesn’t take rocket science to figure that’s a game where only the law-makers get to win.

“It’s an expensive program,” he says. “And there are plenty of commercial outlets who would like to privatize the process and force the inhabitants of Earth to pay for clean air and water, but—”

“But the government is going to graciously step in and altruistically solve all the problems?”

“The system works,” Rian protests. “It can be slow sometimes, unwieldy, but it works.”

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