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staff had realised just how powerless
they really were and were taking perverse pleasure in accepting the
fact.
    The man seated
opposite cut a striking muscular figure with his bald head and
bushy beard, but it was the tatty flight suit and patch over his
left eye that held her attention. They were a reminder of why he
was here in her office, very annoyed and presenting her with a
demand that may as well have been a request for snow machines in
hell.
    “I’m sorry Quirinus,”
Verdandi said. “I cannot change the rules just for you.”
    “But it’s my
livelihood!” Quirinus exclaimed, his Australian drawl somewhat
lacking the finesse of Verdandi’s clipped English tones. “Take away
my pilot’s licence and I have no way of earning a living. There’s
enough of us without work as it is!”
    “The eyesight test is
strict for a reason,” she said sternly. “I will not have one-eyed
pilots fly in and out of my spaceport! The Newbrum clinic is fully
equipped to fit bionic devices, so it’s not as if you’re out of
options.”
    “None of us from the
hollow moon have that sort of money. You know that.”
    Verdandi gave a
sympathetic nod and shifted her gaze to the window on her right.
Her office was small and minimalist, decorated only by a portrait
of Queen Victoria II on the wall behind her desk, but had a good
view of the city centre oasis that was Circle Park. Of the four
hundred refugees from the Dandridge Cole , barely half had
found work in Newbrum and gained the housing rights that came with
a job. The rest lived in temporary habitation modules on the edge
of the park, much to the dismay of Newbrum’s other three thousand
residents who were not impressed that the only bit of greenery
within the city had become a shanty town, complete with a motley
collection of dispossessed farm animals. Many refugees from the
asteroid commune, having no concept of a credit-driven economy,
were overwhelmed by how complicated day-to-day life was wherever
money was involved, especially when they had none. Verdandi sighed
and returned her attention to the matter in hand.
    “You do not need to be
a pilot to operate your own ship,” she pointed out. “Have you
thought about hiring someone to fly that old freighter of yours for
you?”
    “I did hire a pilot,
some idiot called Momus,” Quirinus told her. “He’s run me back and
forth to the Dandridge Cole a few times but what he
laughingly called his ship has been impounded for failing safety
checks.”
    “Oh, that Momus. What
about your own ship?”
    “The Platypus is stuck at the hollow moon, going nowhere fast. The repairs won’t
be finished for a while yet. I need a licence to hire myself out
and earn a few credits.”
    “After what you did?
Barely hours after being grounded, you’re up on Stellarbridge trying to make off with a fuel tanker!”
    “It’s our tanker!”
protested Quirinus. The hollow moon’s fuel supply ship Indra , which had been used as a makeshift lifeboat following
the failure of the Dandridge Cole ’s power systems, was
incapable of atmospheric flight and had been parked in Ascension
orbit ever since. “In my defence, the Indra ’s flight systems
are all automatic and don’t whinge like Momus. Anyway, it’s needed
at the Dandridge Cole and the harbour master did say he
wanted it out of the way.”
    “I feel for you
Quirinus, I really do,” she said, though there was a definite edge
to her voice. The Commonwealth Space Station CSS
Stellarbridge , in orbit around Ascension, only had a dozen or
so docking gates and the Indra was blocking at least five.
Verdandi had received a complaint that very morning from the
harbour master about what this and the non-payment of fees was
doing to business and was in no mood for compromise. “Maybe you
should consider a career change until your daughter can help you
with what you have grandly referred to as your interstellar courier
business. I heard she’s settled into life on Newbrum better