DATE: 21 JUNE, 2179 TIME- 08:12
Al Simpson enjoyed mornings in the command block, despite the fact that "morning" was an elusive concept on Acheron. The constant swirl of volcanic ash and loose soil in the atmosphere blotted out any direct sunlight, but on a relatively calm day, morning took on a pleasant, twilight glow.
The colony buzzed with people hard at work. Outside the broad Plastik window—its storm shield raised —he could see the giant Daihatai six-wheeled crawlers moving about, emerging from underground garages and crossing the breadth of the growing colony. Simpson thought of them all as spiders, working together to construct a single web.
He turned away from the window and took a sip. After years on Acheron, the shit that passed for coffee up here had finally started to taste good to him. He watched the technicians at their consoles, rushing around, tapping data into computers, and it felt good, especially when he reminded himself that unlike the people of Hadley's Hope, this was just a job to him. The colonists had signed on more or less for life.
His gaze drifted purposefully toward Mina Osterman, the most recent hire. She'd arrived two months earlier as a replacement for the plant architect, Borstein, who'd gone to work on a new colony Weyland-Yutani was developing in another sector. Mina was young with ginger hair and dark eyes, and she held herself always in a sort of relaxed pose that made people feel comfortable around her. What on earth had possessed her to apply for this posting he mused, smiling at his choice of words. What on Earth indeed.
He turned to head back to his console and saw his assistant operations manager, Brad Lydecker, rushing toward him. Lydecker was normally a tall, thin, dour man with a receding hairline, but today he seemed positively excited.
'Hey Al, you remember you sent some wildcatters out to the middle of nowhere, out past the Ilium range?'
Simpson grimaced. The Jordens.
And the morning had been going so well.
'Yeah, what?' he asked curtly.
'Well, the guy's on the horn from our mom-and-pop survey team,' Lydecker explained. 'Says he's on to something, and wants to know if his claim will be honoured.'
'Why wouldn't his claim be honoured?'
'Well because you sent him out to that particular middle of nowhere on company orders maybe, I dunno.'
'Christ,' Simpson said, putting some drama into it. 'Some honch in a cushy office on Earth says go look at a grid reference, we look. They don't say why, and I don't ask. I don't ask because it takes two weeks to get an answer out here, and the answer is always "Don't ask".'
'So what do I tell this guy?' Lydecker said.
Simpson glanced at his coffee, but it had lost its magic altogether.
'Tell him that as far as I'm concerned, if he finds something, it's his.'