Blue Light Special

Sean Irizarry's eyes scanned his status board, searching out any red danger lights. All green: go for entry. He fired the hydrazine monopropellent rockets to angle his spacecraft toward the surface, and then flicked the toggle switch to extend the airfoils and turn his spaceship into a spaceplane.

"Whadd'ya do that for?" Ubuntu sputtered, his black face scowling.

"Oh, reflex. I saw the blue stratosphere."

"That's not an atmosphere; that's a rock farting." A faint cerulean haze floated about the surface of Zohartze. Ubuntu was correct. The gas was too thin to be called air, even air made mostly out of methane outgassing from the planetary body. This rocky satellite orbited its primary vertical to the Solar plane within Neptune's rings. The huge visage of the Water-God's planet filled its sky of heavily salted, pepper black, forever night. It was as big as the North-Eastern seacoast of America – the size of New England, New York, and New Jersey. Throw in Nova Scotia too if you would like. That all made sense to the navigation computer and its Solar Positioning System. It also was logical to Irizarry who could read the map co-ordinates facilely even though i (the imaginary square-root of -1) was included in the spacial notations.

Irizarry also knew how far Earth was, how many days travel would bring him home. He was acutely aware because the homeworld was currently on the far side of the Sun, precluding any video-mail blip-transmission. He only hoped his girlfriend had not found anyone else to go to the holograms with, or to watch the earthrise over the Sea of Tranquility.

Ubuntu and Irizarry's spacecraft was a supply heavy lifter out of the Mannaman Mac Lir. That ship was a long range cruiser, hauling cargo and passengers to the outer planets. The two spacers had spent months crowded onto the artificial biosphere with pioneers for Europa, and then enjoyed a more comfortable angled flight here to the other blue planet in the Solar System.

The Mannaman was owned by a Fortune 1000 company, but Ubunta and his dirtbound stockholders rented warehouse space on the large ion-powered floating city. Most of their clients were also independent businesses: mom and pop operations. Or in this case, Moon and Poppy, their customers on Zohartze.

A small sign reading Provisions & Dry Goods hung above the airlock. Zohartze had a positive gravity; that is if you dropped something, it would fall, even if too slowly for even the Lunar trained eye. So, Irizarry knew enough to to keep a close grasp on his ale. Poppy gave one free drink to the space haulers, hopping for a costly second round. She did this in a small cordoned off corner of her shop. Actually it was Moon and Poppy's. Poppy was a dusky, little Pastoon woman. Moon was a tall Asian with straight, long black hair and slanted eyes. They were partners in ways not associated with their business too.

Ubuntu nursed his small single malt Scotch. Poppy's magnetic boots clip-clopped over to their tiny table.

"Here's the receipt for the remittance transfer. Every Yuan counts when you're a small business."

Ubuntu grunted in agreement. He had his own venture. "You'll resell it all." He pointed a thumb toward a Ringminer standing by the main counter, and Moon.

Irizarry's eyes looked in the direction. Other famous dwarfs were named Sneezy, Sleepy, even Sleazy , but this one must have been called Stout. A long blond ponytail trailed down his short environmental shellsuit. A miner's axe-pike hung down his back. Poppy stomped over to the short man with another set of papers.

"Here you go, Blaque," Poppy said, handing over a yellow packslip for his order. "You're good to go on loading bay 5."

"We no sell. We no sell," Moon yelled, coming out from behind her counter, and kicking a crate of candy toward Ubuntu. It slid across the floor, stopping at the miner's feet.

"You can keep it," Ubuntu said, his brain calculating two things – first the weight/distance price ratio to bring it back, and second, the fact that if Blaque liked it, he could get Moon to order it. The short man read the label on the side of the case.

"It's candy?" Blaque asked.

"Yeah, chewing gum. Made of 100% recycled materials."

"Recycled gum? Ooo." Poppy made a face.

"Not recycled gum, recycled plastics," Irizarry interjected. "Plastic doesn't bio-degrade, or at least doesn't break down in human time. The organic-chemical companies developed their own microorganisms to do the job. These things aren't allowed back on Earth. The first designer genome was back in twenty-oh-eight, I think. Anyway, big plastic dumps are scattered about Luna. Artificial microbes cannot operate on Earth – only in safe zones. These artificial genome plants recycle the carbon strings. And bam, you got candy."

"Gum," Ubuntu corrected.

The Ringminer picked up the box and headed for the airlock. "Gotta pull some Hyperion isotope outta these rocks to pay for all these goodies," he said.

"Careful Blaque. New Faithful's about to outgas. Every ninety minutes, you know." Blaque cycled out the airlock.

"Whoa!" cried Irizarry. He was staring out a porthole at the barren surface of Zohartze.

The miner's case of candy began to bulge at the sides. An azure foam burst out from inside the box. It covered the miner. It ate away at the plastic components in his shellsuit. The hose connecting his atmosphere supply dissolved away. The blue foam blew away like debris in a March wind as the air exploded out.

"Blaque!" yelled Poppy. The dark woman ran for the airlock, grabbing her own suit. Moon placed one slender hand on her partner's arm. "Too late. You no can help. I so sorry."

"The methane gas had to have done something to the microbes." Irizzary thought.

The message went out: ZOHARTZE QUARANTINED. MICROBIAL INFESTATION.

Poppy's next video-mail was sent to her lawyers on Callisto.

Find more by G.C. Dillon in the Author Index.

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