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to walk toward the door, “I'll be sure to make an appointment.” Then she turned and was gone.
     

Chapter 4
     
     
    Aidan had heard once—and he had no reason to disbelieve it—that sailors at sea in the age of wood and iron included in their pay a measure of rum, a measure that each man treasured almost above his own life. He had also been told that mutinies were more likely to result from a deficit in this remuneration than other, seemingly less trivial, complaints.
    Whatever was or was not correct about that story, he could say for certain that it was no longer true. His ship, or the ship that was his, before it blew up in deep space with only one lonely survivor, had nothing of the sort, and alcohol was forbidden to the crew. So, when the fleet finally reached space dock in orbit around the Earth, the first thing he did was seek out a bar. He found one on the second sublevel, wedged in between a tattoo parlor and a pawnshop.
    It was a Merchant Marine pub and it should have been a place he felt at home. But as hooded eyes turned suspiciously his way, he felt the urge in the depths of his stomach to back away. To run from those looks, to hide from them. It wasn’t that he was a stranger. No, they were expecting him, even if they didn’t know it was him they were expecting. As he walked to the bar, he felt the eyes upon him, fading only as he approached the bear of a man who apparently ran the place.
    The tavern had a dirty feel. From the walls hung nets and anchors, oars and old ships' steering wheels. The Interstellar Guilds claimed an affinity, a direct lineage really, to the seafarers of old, and he had never been in a guild tavern that didn't look exactly like this.
    He glanced up at the mural over the bar, a tacky bit of ostentation that nevertheless seemed completely appropriate for the place. It was of an ancient mariner, floppy yellow hat pulled down over his eyes almost to his beard, gray great coat hanging loosely around him. His arm was extended, grasping the hand of another man, this one tall and clean-shaven, the guild emblem emblazoned on the shoulder of his blue jacket. “Unto the Ends of the Earth and Beyond,” was written in cursive above them in metallic gold leaf.
    As Aidan sat down at the bar, the crashing cymbals and metal buzz of the end of some neo-cosmic rock song he didn't know assaulted his ears. When “Sweet Home Alabama” started, he longed for simpler days.
    “Bourbon,” he said. “A double on the rocks.”
    The bartender stared at Aidan for long enough that he was afraid the man recognized him. But then he turned and grabbed a bottle, pouring a long, thin line of whiskey until the glass was nearly overflowing. Aidan finished half of it in the first gulp. He looked down into the brown liquid and spoke to no one. But he couldn't help hearing.
    “Fleet's in,” said a man twice Aidan's age, who sat beside him. At first, Aidan worried he had spoken to him, but a sideways glance alleviated that fear, though the man's unguarded voice boomed loud enough that Aidan could hear every word he spoke to the portly woman, who perched herself on a stool to his right. She was drinking some orange liquid that Aidan did not recognize. “We should hear about the Vespa soon enough.”
    A chill ran down Aidan's back at the sound of his old ship's name.  It was only a heretofore unknown reserve that kept him from shaking so violently that everyone in the room would notice. He leaned in close to the man, and in that moment, it seemed as though his ears became attuned to his voice, like he and the woman who sat beside him were the only people in all the world.
    “Something's wrong there,” she said, “but I don't think you'll learn anything more than we've already heard.”
    “And just what have you heard?” the old man asked. “I've heard nothing but rumors and I don't know that I believe any of them. Nobody's been out to the crash site but the fleet.”
    “That's just it, isn't it? Nobody's