Cent: "Should have seen that coming"

"I am here at the invitation of Administrator Goodwin and his staff, and I represent myself and Apex Orbital Services, and the interests of exploration."

I was shocked when I read of this meeting, sir. It was never the intention of our company that by offering lower prices to orbital destinations the United States government would seek to reduce NASA's budget. Our goal was only to expand the human races' knowledge and grasp of its neighborhood by easing the travel restrictions that physics forces us to obey."

Travel is the word that you should pay attention to. NASA's mission statement reflects scientific discovery and aeronautics research, things that Apex is not prepared for or able to provide. We are a travel and delivery service, at our heart. While we do travel further and easier than has been offered in the past, we need NASA to be able to be a partner with our exploration strategy, or out of necessity we will be forced to focus on our other partners to the exclusion of the United States."

Please believe me, sir, this is in no way a threat. Our company wants the same kind of international cooperation that has so exemplified the world's investment into the International Space Station. Peaceful, scientific exploration leading to commercial development. This is not a time trim down. It's a time to double down."

I opened my handbag and got out the triple bagged glass jar and put it on the table. Administrator Goodwin, knowing what it was, looked at it with a bit of awe, but I ignored him and stared at the Chairman, waiting for him to say something. It didn't take him long.

"Young lady, what is that?"

I smiled slowly. "It's half a liter of martian soil from the Melas Chasma. I was there last week. This is an official invitation to join me."

Well, that last part of that was fairly drowned out by the audience, but I think the committee transcriber got it. I picked up the jar and handed it to Mr. Goodwin, smiled winningly, and jumped.


The building was a bit run down. Dad, Wanda and I stood in the lobby while the realtor described the business that had built, then lost it in the economic downturn.

"They were trying to create a startup internet grocery delivery service that would compete locally with Amazon and Walmart. The building is mostly storage space and computer stations, with business offices on the upper floors." He pointed upwards to the three stories above us with his pen. "They kept it up for a year before the times and lack of interest killed the business. The building is very modern for its type, built to accommodate loads of communication traffic and quick access to stored items."

Wanda went with him to look at the dispatch and security offices while Dad and I took the stairs to look at the offices.

Dusty. Houston has that effect on unused buildings. I turned to Dad and said, "Remind me again why you want it here."

He was looking thoughtfully around at the empty offices. "It's not how easily we can get around, it's how easily people that we need can get together. We're two miles from the Johnson space center, five miles from the Houston port, the second busiest in the nation, and surrounded by the associated space industry and science centers.

Your Mom is still looking for a private house for us, but as the defacto head of security, I want, for now, our place of business to have good surveillance and protection. We're putting bedrooms and good washrooms in whatever place we get, but I like the setup here. I admit it'll take a lot of remodelling for our needs, but I think this is the place." I shook my head tiredly. I'd tried to get him to look at Detroit, since it was so depressed it would welcome the dollars we'd bring in, but to him, Houston was the heart of NASA and if I wanted to work with them, I'd have to be here.

I told him to have it his way. At least it wasn't as hot as the rest of Texas. When we met up again with Wanda, she agreed that the building would meet our needs. "It's actually cooler than I'm used to," she grinned. "I'm glad you didn't decide on Vegas. I've been getting sick of that city for a while now. It'll be good to move."


It's good to have family. I don't think it's possible to have a closer one than mine; Mom, Dad, me, and now Grandmother have more reason to stick together than any I have heard of. We've been under a potential sentence of death or capture and enslavement through most of our lives by some fairly evil types. That can have a tendency to draw a family together.

But now… Okay. Dad's side of the family pretty much ended with the death of his mother, and then father three years ago. Dad has some horror stories about growing up with the man, and I don't regret not getting to know him.

Mom, on the other hand…

Mom's contact with family other than Grandmother had to be just as circumspect as with her; so visits were pretty scarce while I was growing up.

Then Spacegirl happened.

"Okay, okay, OKAY!" I yelled over the excited murmur. "We need to get some things straight. Kristen Station is not a playhouse. It's a very complex machine working very hard to keep people alive in the harshest environment the human race has ever been in. That means no poking buttons, no arguing with your minder, and pay attention to everything we just told you about being in space. We had you skip breakfast for a reason… it cuts down on usage of the bags you are holding."

Eyes went down to the plastic bags in everyone's hands with paper towels and peppermint scent. There were ten pairs of them, all from Mom's side of the family, starting with Uncle Oliver and Aunt Lisa and their two boys and one girl, along with spouses for two of them, and ending with Aunt Mary, Mom's divorced sister and her two girls, both unmarried.

We had decided on ten being the minimum age for visiting the station; old enough to take seriously the advice and prohibitions necessary to visit their grandmother. The youngest this time would be Cate, Mary's youngest at fourteen, thank goodness. Mom and I would bring up two at a time, introduce and hand them off to one of the staff. Since it would tax the station environment to have them all up at once, we were splitting them down the middle at five per trip total.

We had given them all the warnings; keep your head still, breath deeply, fix your eyes on one spot until you are certain your stomach is steady… but they all thought they were ready.

I came to Uncle Oliver and hugged him from the back. He stiffened slightly, then consciously relaxed, then asked, "Why from the back?" I answered, "You'll find out. In three, two, one…"

He did spasm, like almost everyone does. It's not something that had ever been discovered before jumpers, but then there had been no way to bring someone from a one gee environment to microgravity instantly. In some it was more violent than others; if I had been in front of him, his knees would have hit my thighs or worse. It also put me behind him in case he had an instant eruption problem.

I had jumped him right next to Seeana near the sick bay area. She put a hand on his back and the other on his side, giving him a feeling of support. He started to turn his head towards me and Seeana barked from in front of him, "Eyes on me! We weren't kidding about moving your head. If you want to turn, here's a rope. Turn your whole body to look around."

I left him in Seeanas' capable hands and went over to help Mom. She and Jaline hadn't been as quick as Seeana, but the nausea had been completely contained within the bag. Totally worth a missed breakfast. As soon as they both were under control, we pointed them towards Grandmother waiting patiently down by the viewing port, and Mom and I continued our ferrying duties.

At the end of the day, I think it was successful. It was turning out that Bee, one of Grandmother's first medical aid's extreme reaction to microgravity was rare; the poor girl went into uncontrollable fear spasms without the steady pull of the planet. All of our visitors kept mostly steady, and far more of the paper towels in the emesis kits were used to dry eyes than their intended purpose.

The experienced crew there kept everyone out of delicate machinery which wasn't very hard; when not talking to or hugging Grandmother, they mostly gawked out the window at the blue lovely outside. All in all, it was a nice visit.

Afterward, Mom and I took them all out to eat at an Olive Garden near Aunt Mary's house in Greenwood, Florida that we had totally rented out for the evening. I was growing used to not having privacy earthside in public, but I didn't want Mom's family to start avoiding us for that reason. Dad stayed at the station per our policy of having jumpers handy in case of emergency.

I mostly hung out with my cousins at our own table. There were a lot of questions about being in orbit and jumping; I responded in detail to the first and gave my stock nonanswers for the second. It took a while, but I was getting better at redirecting conversation away from me, and I found out more about the lives of these people that I should have known better. I wanted to change that, and the last part of the evening was involved with ways we could get together under the radar of the paparazzi that seemed to swarm whenever they heard I was going to show up.

Mom and I collared Oliver before we all broke up for the evening, and asked if we could ride back to his hotel with him. He gave a surprised look and grunted in the affirmative, adding, "I don't think I've been in a car with you since you were in college, Millie."

We followed him to his room in the plush Palm Garden hotel and Mom and I sat across from he and his wife. I started.

"Uncle Oliver, Apex Orbital wants to hire you. We're being sued."

He nodded. "Surprised it took this long. You should have seen it coming."

Mom blinked. "What do you mean?"

"You're a target. Any big company is. It only costs around 500 dollars to file a lawsuit in most of the country, and too many people like to game the system hoping to get a settlement from corporations that don't want to bother with going to court. Is it just the one suit?"

"Well, no. The company has one, and Cent another. Remember Jade, from the Station tour? Her mother has filed claiming malicious influence and interference with her education. She… disapproves of some choices that her daughter is making and is blaming us. Jade says lashing out is something she's done before, and she can't put a stop to it. They aren't speaking anymore."

I said, "We haven't actually incorporated. Just registered the name and got a tax ID in Kansas. We wanted to keep our footprint as small as possible."

Oliver looked shocked. "That small footprint might kill your company, Cent. You need the protection that filing for incorporation gives you." He pulled out a notebook from a side table and began writing. "Do you have any money on you?"

Mom got into her purse and retrieved a hundred dollar bill. "Is this enough?"

"Sure. Do you mind if I pull Savannah in on this? She wants to get into corporate law." Savannah was his son Johns' wife.

"Not at all, if you think it'll help." She and Oliver traded pieces of paper and he said, "Okay, you've hired my firm. I'll file papers as soon as we get back and look into those suits. I'll take care of everything, but I have to charge you the firms' rates, I'm afraid."

I shrugged. "We're making money. I'm still getting delivery orders and the NASA and other contracts will be cash cows for the foreseeable future. You should know that we are buying a building in Houston to house groundside operations. Dad made the offer yesterday."

Aunt Lisa was stifling yawns. Mom said, "Call us when you get back to the office and schedule a meeting. We'll bring all the paperwork we have."

We got up, gave hugs all around, and Mom and I jumped back to the Station, remaining quiet once we saw that Grandmother was sleeping. I said softly to Mom, "Okay, Apex now has a legal department. I hope we find someone to run the company that deals with that better than I."