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overwhelming, but they are substantial.
There will, of course, be tax considerations. Do you have an
accountant?’
    Sam opened his
mouth, found his throat dry, and swallowed. ‘Uh, yes. I have an
accountant. I… I’ll be in touch. Uh… Thank you.’
    Marie was
smiling, her eyes brimming. ‘He always said you made him happy.
Congratulations.’
    ‘Thanks. I’ve
got no idea what I’m going to do with… Uh, are you going to take up
this change of career thing he suggested?’
    ‘Well, yes, but
I need to learn. I always wanted to act, you see? Felix said I
should do it and I said I couldn’t afford to be out of work to go
back to school.’
    Sam nodded. ‘I
don’t suppose you could keep cleaning this place, at least for a
while? At least until I figure out what the Hell I’m going to do
with it.’
    Marie’s eyes
scanned over him. ‘Well, you’re good for the money and, uh, well,
you know I live in the basement apartment, right?’
    Sam blinked and
pulled in a long breath. So he had also inherited a tenant. ‘I did
not, but that works fine. We’ll keep that arrangement. I assume
your rent was covered in your pay?’ That got a nod and then Marie’s
eyes narrowed as she shifted to look over Sam’s shoulder.
    Turning, Sam
found himself looking at the two corporate types. Neither had been
named during the reading and he had no idea who they were, so why
were they here at all? They did seem to be waiting to speak to him,
however. ‘Can I help you gentlemen at all?’
    ‘Mister
Clarion,’ the nearest said, ‘we represent parties in the area who
would be interested in purchasing this property from you. Mister
Kenan’s untimely death interrupted our negotiations.’
    Sam felt Marie
stirring behind him, and he was moderately sure what she wanted to
say. ‘Felix told me he had rejected offers to buy this place
recently,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t even own it yet and it’s hardly
appropriate to discuss selling it at this time. Perhaps you could
leave me a card…?’
    The man smiled
with his mouth, not with his eyes. ‘We’ll be in touch.’ Then he
turned and headed for the door, his compatriot following quickly
behind him.
    ‘Felix did not
like them very much,’ Marie murmured from behind Sam’s back.
    ‘No. I know,’
Sam replied, though he had been more concerned about the gun he had
seen under the jacket of the second of their corporate
visitors.
    Jenner Research
Station, 17 th March.
    You arrived at Jenner
Research Station by landing on one of two platforms set into the
basalt lake which filled the seventy-four-kilometre - wide crater, and then the whole platform dropped into
the shuttle bay beneath while a pair of huge doors slid over the
hole. The entire facility was underground, buried in the solid,
radiation-resistant rock which, long ago, had flooded out of the
Moon’s surface.
    ‘How the Hell
did Hunt manage to get anything out of this place?’ Fox asked as
Terri escorted her off the shuttle and into the reception area at
the side of the bay.
    ‘Money. He paid
someone a whole lot of money, and even then he got old data.’ She
snapped a grin at Fox, but her expression and body language had
been getting more and more tense the closer she got to the
facility. ‘He didn’t bribe the right technician.’
    Even though Fox
had been given the highest security rating MarTech had in every
facility they had, Terri had to take her through a registration
process with the station’s AI, confirming her identity and stating
the access privileges she was allowed on site.
    ‘Totally
separate security system?’ Fox asked.
    ‘No exterior
communications are allowed automatic transmission into the base’s
computer systems,’ Terri replied. ‘Jenner really is our most
secure facility. Well, the station we have on Venus has better
physical isolation and some isolated computing facilities,
but Jenner is designed to be off the grid. I’ll need to register
Kit too; otherwise, she’ll run into all sorts of