SoylentNews

As we're multiplying, the world's on the brink,
But that's just what the Devil wants you to think,
Don't ever stop shoppin', don't ever give in,
'Cause if we stop shoppin', the terrorists win.

-- The Claypool Lennon Delirium

Domestic Nuclear Shelters

How to Build a Fallout Shelter.

That nice Mr Putin has built many public nuclear shelters in Moscow in recent years.

Patriots who put their own countries first should always be prepared.

The strong are now putting their own countries first. Several countries are now putting themselves first. Obviously, all countries at present are confined to planet Earth. Who will win? What will happen to those who are second and third? Will the patriots be content?

"Racing for power, and all come in last." -- Megadeth.

We all breath the same atmosphere and drink the same water.

Patriots don't need affordable medical care. Only the weak get sick. President Pull-My-Finger is going to see to it that patriots get to keep as much of their own money as possible so that the weak, who drag the country down, are motivated to improve. On this side of the pond, the NHS is getting ready to be sold off cheap to American healthcare corporations when we get our massive trade deal with the USA. TTIP on steroids? The interests of American corporations will trump (see what I did there) our own interests under the law. Michael Gove is a great patriot.

We're also going to be withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights. Fine, upstanding patriots don't need "Human Rights." Only criminals and deviants need Human Rights. It was a mistake our writing them in the first place.

I'm glad I'm not foreign. Come to think of it, I'm ethnic. I'm Scottish and live in England. Obviously, I can't be a true patriot. This is worrying.

And finally, here's one I made up all by myself:

Hey diddle diddle, Vlad did a piddle,
All over the Whitehouse floor,
The little Trump laughed to see such sport,
And the Brexiters clamored for more.

Christmas is coming, turkeys.

PS. At least patriots have democratically proved that Global Warming is a liberal-fascist Marxist conspiracy to keep the poor down.

PPS. That other great British patriot, Nigel Farage is taking a job with Faux News.

PPPS. UKIP's Eddie Hitler is standing for election to parliament in Stoke Central. Will the great patriots get a second MP?

(This was written last year but never posted)

        I spent a hundred bucks on my next book last week.
        Each story had an illustration at the beginning, except one: “Watch Your Language, Young Man!” I could find no suitable old women on Google Images, so I figured I’d have to either find an old woman at a bar who would want to be the illustration of a shrewish old lady, or just get out my pencil and make one.
        Rust never sleeps! And boy, but my fingers seemed to be solid rust. Of course, when I was young I drew every day, or at least almost every day. I was damned good.
        Not any more. I haven’t drawn a single thing since my kids were born three decades ago. So of course when I sat down with pencil and paper, nothing was produced but offal.
        Damn. It was late and I’d had a few beers, so maybe I was drunk? I set it aside for the next morning.
        Several days and a couple sheets of paper later and I finally had a cartoon drawing of an angry old crone. I figured I’d digitize her the same way I digitized my slides—I’d use my phone’s camera. With an eight by ten image to photograph, it should work fine. After all, the cover of The Paxil Diaries is a photo of one of my paintings I painted when I still had talent, and it turned out all right.
        Not Mrs. Ferguson. The white paper was a neutral gray in the digital image. “GIMP’ll fix it,” I thought.
        Nope. Adjusting the brightness and contrast removed some of the details. Actually, a lot of them.
        Several tries later I gave up, and decided to just scan it. I went down to the basement, where the scanner’s been since I moved in here, and realized that first, it probably wouldn’t work any more, and even if it did it used a parallel port to get the image in a computer, and when was the last time you saw a parallel port? So I drove to Staples, where all the scanners were attached to printers!
        I finally found a sales guy, who found a couple without printers that cost more than the ones with printers attached. He said they always put printers on cheap scanners, so I bought one of the expensive ones, an Epson Perfection V39.
        I took it home and scanned Mrs. Ferguson, put her at the top of the story, printed her out, and shrunk down like that, again a lot of the details were gone. So I thickened some lines and rescanned. It’s fine now.
        I wasn’t going to mention it because when I bought the scanner I had the idea of scanning all the photo albums for Patty, but that’s taking a long time, they won’t be done by Christmas, and Leila says she can’t come this year, anyway.
        I have one scanned, and half its photos straightened out and separated from each other, but I’ll be at it for a while. I’m also going to scan the book my uncle co-write, and if I get permission from my aunt to publish it I’ll do so. Of course, it would only be of interest to family since it’s about family history, some of it ancient, fifteenth century ancient.
        I really like that scanner! It’s a lot smaller than the old one in the basement; that one’s four or five inches thick and a foot and a half by two feet, and has a power cord with a big box in the middle and a parallel port. The new one is smaller than my big laptop and needs no power cable, as it gets its power from the USB port. It uses the same kind of USB cable as your phone (unless you have an Apple, which is compatible with nothing).
        At any rate, I haven’t written much lately...

It strikes me that many Soylentils are completely ignorant of the finer details of Theology. That is "theology": the study of the nature of god (theos, θεός). So let's delve, as they say.

Does god exist? To me, this is a rather silly question. Mostly because when someone asks it, they really have no idea what they are saying. What is a "god"? I like to think that god is an old Greek guy with a white beard, but that is only because I am an old Greek guy with a beard. No one obeys my commandments though.

Metaphysically, god is the source of existence, the "creator" (although that implies intention, which may not be appropriate), the origin, the causa sui or self-caused being. This is all Aristotle's fault, mostly since he could not abide the idea of an infinite regress of causes. Those of us who can, think he was just silly. Does existence have to have a source? Does there have to be a "first post"? Oh, sorry, a "first cause"?

  God as a telos. In Greek, τέλος. And end, the Omega at the end of the Greek alphabet, the final purpose and reason of it all. This is the one that has always puzzled me, and it is related to Aristotle's phobia about infinite series: if there is not ultimate value, no one end and purpose to the universe, then we might as well just throw in the towel and the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic Thumb, because we might as well all be godless atheists. In fact, maybe we are. But the idea that there can be no morality with out an ultimate principal of good, this always seemed wrong to me, since most of the believers in god that I have know I would not trust enough to turn my back on them.

  God as Capitalist! Yes? God owns everything, since he (or, she?) created it all. That means that god is Lord God, to you, you miserable creature and peon! You can only get to Heaven if you suck up enough to the boss man so that he will Grace you with a ticket to paradise. I have to admit, this one is even more confusing to me. Why would a perfect being, an omniscient, omnipotent, omni-benevolent being, want me, one of his lowly creations, to kiss his ass? Is God a Donald? This is why I think there is no god, and if there is actually a god, I tell him to go and Donald himself (again, why is it a "him"? Red Pillars are welcome to interject [no ejaculation!!] here). Seems that god is often a parental substitute, for people who still have issues.

OK, time for some "real" God! Maybe it exists, maybe not; maybe this existence matters, probably not. The Egyptians built a rather large sculpture, know as the Sphinx. Head of a man, body of a lion, tail of a serpent. Alright, we get it. That is what god looks like. Not. The point of symbolism is to present a symbol (sum: "with"; bolos, "thrown") that stands for something that it is not. So the Sphinx stands for the Egyptian god, but what it really is saying is "Our god looks like nothing you have ever seen before, kind of like this!" Of course, the point religions always mistake, is that god does not look anything like the symbol.

So, Jesus! God looks like a man? Seriously? Well maybe, in some sort of metaphorical sense. Maybe god looks like a criminal executed by the Romans, if we are really to be literal. But there is something to be said for this. God is the most powerful, perfect being in the universe, and he has the audacity to incarnate as a puny human who gets himself executed for speaking up? What are we to make of the power and glory of that?

The point of this whole journal, however, it to poke Libertarians in their cocatarix theologis. You are going to have to serve someone. It may be the devil, it may be the lord, but you are going to have to serve someone. That's Bob Dylan right there, peeps! I, on the other hand, as a dyed in the wool atheist SJW, am free as a bird to warrior on for social justice. I do not do this because god tells me, since there is no god and I have no master, I am a free individual who pursues justice because, well, it is just the right thing to do, god or no god.

And to the alt-right, the worshipers of Eris, of Keke, of Pepe; your god does not only not exist, your god is a mirror representation of your own twisted values, or, lack of values. Or, most certainly, lack of values that would not destroy themselves immediately. If God is perfect, good, and immortal, god cannot hate. If your god hates, it might not be god. Just saying!

Found a story about my... well not my home town but the town you have to go to from my home town for anything besides gas, beer, or religion. Turns out Nick Cage's rental car broke down there and he had a thing or two to say about the place. See, that's what I mean when I say to folks who only see what my views on politics and other big shat are, you don't know me at all.

This kind of shit is just another day in a red state. If someone comes up and says you owe them something that you don't, you laugh and punch them in the face but if you see someone in actual need, you help your fellow man because it's the right thing to do and because you might need a hand too some time. In a place where most everybody grows up poor and having to work their ass off to get by, you help each other because it's just what you do. Nick could have broke down a half mile from where he did over by the meth dealers and he still would have gotten the same reception.

Sixteen: The Final Chapter

It's that time of year again. The time of year when everyone and their dog waxes nostalgic about all the shit nobody cares about from the year past, and stupidly predicts the next year in the grim knowledge that when the next New Year comes along nobody will remember
that the dumbass predicted a bunch of foolish shit that turned out to be complete and utter balderdash. I might as well, too. Just like I did last year (yes, a lot of this was pasted from last year's final chapter).

Some of these links go to /., S/N, mcgrewbooks.com, or mcgrew.info. Stories and articles meant to ultimately be published in a printed book have smart quotes, and slashdot isn't smart enough for smart quotes.

As usual, first: the yearly index:
Journals:
Random Scribblings
the Paxil Diaries
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015

Articles:
Useful Dead Technologies Redux
The Old Sayings Are Wrong
How to digitize all of your film slides for less than ten dollars
GIMPy Text
The 2016 Hugo convention

Song
My Generation 21st Century
Santa Killed My Dog!

Book reviews
Stephen King, On Writing
Vachel Lindsay, The Golden Book of Springfield
J. D. Lakey, Black Bead

Scince Fiction:
Wierd Planet
The Muse
Cornodium
Dewey's War
The Naked Truth
The Exhibit
Agoraphobia
Trouble on Ceres

Last years' stupid predictions (and more):

Last year I said I wasn't going to predict publication of Voyage to Earth and Other Stories, and I was right, it's nearly done. So this year I do predict that Voyage to Earth and Other Stories will be published. I'm waiting for Sentience to come back from Motherboard, who's been hanging on to it since last February. I may have to e-mail them and cancel the submission if it isn't back by this February.

I'll also hang on to last year's predictions:

Someone will die. Not necessarily anybody I know...
SETI will find no sign of intelligent life. Not even on Earth.
The Pirate Party won't make inroads in the US. I hope I'm wrong about that one.
US politicians will continue to be wholly owned by the corporations.
I'll still be a nerd.
You'll still be a nerd.
Technophobic fashionista jocks will troll slashdot (but not S/N).
Slashdot will be rife with dupes.
Many Slashdot FPs will be poorly edited.
Slashdot still won't have fixed its patented text mangler.
Microsoft will continue sucking.
And a new one: DONALD TRUMP WILL (gasp) BE PRESIDENT IF THE US!!! God help us all! (He can't possibly be worse than George H. Bush or James Buchanan, can he?)

Happy New Year! Ready for another trip around the sun?

OK, I've really done it this time...

One of the things that Turgid jr. got for Christmas was a new Android tablet. It's useless.

Mrs Turgid suggested buying some kind of Amazon kids tablet, and I looked them up on line and they didn't look all that great, certainly not for playing Pokemon Go.

So I asked some of the guys at work about tablets for children. They said you can set up an unprivileged user account in Android and lock it down pretty well so that it's mostly safe for supervised use.

With that in mind I went online and ordered a 10" Acer tablet (Acer Iconia One 10) and lo and behold Acer have removed the ability to create multiple user accounts.

It's my own stupid fault for not unpacking it and trying it out as soon as I bought it. I could have sent it back...

To be honest, it never occurred to me that a manufacturer would remove the ability to have multiple user accounts. It just seems crazy...

Needless to say, this creates a tricky situation. How do you explain to a 7-year-old that Santa Claus is an idiot?

Can I root the machine and put something sane on it?

The same month that DICE Holdings announced they were selling slashdot, they also had a post asking for questions to ask Briana Wu in a subsequent slashdot interview. I wasn't the only person to ask why Wu was refusing to confirm or deny that she was a transsexual. Actually, I was more direct - Why do you refuse to admit you are a transsexual? Are you ashamed? And a few more questions, including how she can think it's not hypocritical to decry games depictions of women while her own game site has the characters hyper-sexualized, right down to camel-toe.

All gone.

Wouldn't have noticed except that today they posted some more click bait - Brina Wu To Run For Congress.

One poster asked why she hadn't answered the trans question, someone else claimed it hadn't been asked. Au contraire, and I was far from the only one to ask.

Slashdot can no longer benefit from the DMCA's safe harbor provisions for not censoring comments, since they can no longer claim they never censor comments.

I wonder if it happens here ... inquiring minds want to know.

I know a lot of you are disappointed I didn't go ahead and finish the debate on the MIT petition story. Tough.

Most days it's fun smacking down the willfully ignorant but sometimes outside forces conspire to make me too tired to bother. I just delete all the messages, pop open a beer, and watch some TV.

This was one of those times and you're just going to have to live with it.

They say that Santa's coming,
He comes 'round every year.
He comes he'll meet a shotgun slug
'cause he ain't welcome here.

Five years ago this Christmas
The fatass came around
With jingle bells and ho ho hos
And looking like a clown.

He came in for a landing
As I let out a yawn
My house is pretty little
So he landed on the lawn.

I didn't have the time to yell
As he came in through the fog;
He came in fast and and came down hard
And landed on my dog.

He looked around all furtive like
As I reached for my gun,
Then jumped in sleigh, yelled “giddie up”
And took off on the run.

And so, that fatassed bastard
Better stay away from here
'cause ever since he killed my dog
I have no Christmas cheer.

“Bill! Where’ve you been? I thought you said you were going to spend your vacation here on Mars?”

“Up on Ceres for the last three weeks, give me a beer. Make it one of your lagers. They had a real bad emergency up there, and my boat was the only one close enough and fast enough to do any good. They were to do maintenance while I was vacationing, but postponed it for Ceres. Orion Transport had a ship here on Mars, too, but you know better than anybody that their ships are only a third or less as fast as ours. Hell, you used to be a captain and you’re on the Green-Osbourne board of directors.

“Everyone would have been dead when the Orion boat got there if we didn’t have one of our ships here. They sent it anyway, with even more batteries. They would have needed ‘em.”

John, the bartender and owner, replied “Yeah, I talked to Chuck. He called as soon as it happened. I didn’t know you ran the rescue boat. Sorry about your vacation.”

“Well, it was just postponed and I’m on vacation now. So Chuck called?”

***

Chuck Watson, mayor of the habitat dome on Ceres, was shaking as he put down the phone. It was one of the worst catastrophes possible on an asteroid dome; or in his case, a dwarf planet dome. It would have been even worse up on Mars, with the gigantic domes that had been built on that planet, with all of the people living in them. Of course, on Mars they would have all the supplies they would need, considering how many domes were up there.

But still, there were twenty thousand people down here on Ceres, the mining robot operators and the tradespeople and service people and repair people necessary for normal life, and all of their children. And they had less than twenty minutes to get inside a building, as the dome was leaking air, and leaking badly. The sirens went off in everyone’s pockets and purses immediately after the power went out and the battery-powered emergency lighting lit up.

Buildings inside domes were designed for this sort of emergency. They were airtight when the windows were closed, which was seldom; temperatures in the domes were comfortable whether one was inside or outside a building. But when alarms went off, windows closed by themselves. The doors to the outside of buildings opened inwards, and most buildings even had airlocks. Commercial buildings had at least one person-sized airlock at their entrances and exits, and a home’s garage served as the house’s airlock. Anyone not home who didn’t have a garage would have to find shelter elsewhere, because there was no getting inside or outside a building without an airlock when the dome’s pressure dropped too low.

Chuck called his old friend Charlie Onehorse, mayor of Dome Australia Two on Mars, hoping there was a Green-Osbourne ship there, and hoping there were enough supplies on Mars. Nobody but G-O had ships that were fast enough to get here in time, and he wasn’t sure they would survive even if one of that company’s ships were on Mars. The message would be a while getting to Mars, even though luckily the two bodies’ orbits were relatively close right now.

“You’re a dumb arse,” the London-born Chuck told himself when he got off the phone, and called another friend living in a different Martian dome, John Knolls. John owned his favorite Martian bar and quite a bit of Green-Osbourne stock, was on G-O’s board of directors, and his wife was the daughter of one of that company’s founders. If there was a ship available, John could get it here. If he didn’t, more people would die. In fact, he was afraid that everybody might die.

Two were killed in the blast, and three were already dying from radiation sickness. Several more people were injured, four of them critically. There had been an accident in the fusion-powered electrical generators; one of the chambers that the fusion took place in exploded. The entire place was now toxic, and many of the survivors probably wouldn’t survive in the long run.

It wasn't, of course, a fusion explosion. A fusion explosion would have leveled the dome and instantly incinerated everyone there. It was a chemical explosion, and it would likely take months to find the accident’s initial cause.

Buildings in domes were always built with a dome leak in mind, and that was the problem in this case. The reactor was built against and as part of a dome wall. It was built intentionally thin behind the generating plant, far less sturdy than the rest of the building’s walls, so if the unlikely chamber explosion ever actually happened, the force and radiation would go outside the dome.

It worked perfectly, except that some of the building’s seams weren’t quite strong enough. Luckily the whole building didn’t give way or everyone outside at the time would have died instantly. But there were cracks around the doors and air was leaking badly.

It was a matter of time now. Air inside buildings would only last so long, and many had no extra oxygen.

***

“Holy crap,” John said when he read Chuck’s phone call from Ceres. He called the main office on Mars, which was in his dome, and ordered that a ship be readied immediately.

“We only have two here, sir. One is due for maintenance, and the other one is stranded in orbit with two badly damaged generators waiting for a shipment of parts from Earth.”

“Reschedule the maintenance on the one that flies and get it and its pilot ready, and I mean now. This is a real emergency.”

He then called his friend Ed Waldo, who was mayor of his dome. He’d need Ed’s help coordinating everything. Maybe Ed would come by his bar later on when he got off from work.

***

Karen Wilkerson was chief engineer at the power station on Ceres, and was watching the board closely before it happened. One of the techs had pointed out some abnormal readings, and when she saw the blue line spike she hit the evacuation alarm immediately, saving a lot of lives. Had she not seen it coming, everyone in the building would have died. Instead, the only casualties were those who didn’t drop everything and leave the building immediately, and one who had fallen down in her rush to escape and had broken her arm.

Now she was in the annex, worrying about her people. She had already called Dome Hall with the disaster alert. Now all there was to do was to wait until the leaks were patched and a supply ship came with batteries, because they wouldn’t be generating any electricity from this generator again and building a new one would take months.

And wait for air, of course. If that ship didn’t get here on time everyone would likely die.

***

Commander Jose Ramos and the Green-Osbourne Security fleet that he was in charge of were in orbit around Mars, as usual, when he saw the pirates. “¡Santo mierde!” he swore in his native Spanish. That was an awful lot of pirates, more than he’d seen together for years. He set course towards them, and when the pirates saw Ramos’ fleet they took off. The G-O Security ships took chase.

A call came in from G-O headquarters. Transport 487-B was missing, and they believed that it was now in the hands of pirates. It had been stranded in orbit around Mars, waiting for parts for generator repairs. When the first transport showed up with its parts, the ship was gone. The repair facility’s crew was missing, hadn’t even radioed, and was presumed dead.

He swore again. Where was that damned Jones? Jones’ ship was supposed to be guarding the orbiting repair facility that held 487-B. He worried about Bob and his crew, praying that they had simply been disabled by a mechanical malfunction before getting there. He cursed himself; he shouldn’t have let Larry leave until Bob got there.

He then cursed himself for stupidity again; there was no way any pirate could beat Bob and his ship and crew. It must have been a mechanical malfunction.

He wondered how many of the facilities’ personnel had been killed. Damn. There were three orbiting facilities, each with a G-O security ship guarding it, except the ship guarding this one was missing. And it was his responsibility; he should never have let Larry leave no matter how long he had been since he’d eaten or slept. This, he swore, would never happen again.

This was bad. Ever since the piracy had started not long after Mars was colonized, all space vessels were armed to some degree, but G-O ships were the best built, most heavily armored and heavily armed. Transport ships owned by Green-Osborne even had EMPs, atomics, and rail guns, and the security fleet was armed and armored even better. An atomic explosion wouldn’t even damage a G-O craft, whether transport or security, unless it detonated closer than two hundred meters away. They were completely impervious to EMP blasts, which took out any electronics on anyone else’s ships.

Now that pirates had a G-O ship...

***

Bill Kelly was sound asleep when the alarm went off on his phone. It was his boss, who told him he had a half an hour to be in the pilot seat ready for takeoff.

He rolled out of bed and swore. Not having time for a shower or breakfast, he hurriedly dressed and rushed to the spaceport.

“Glad you got here so fast, Bill,” his boss told him. “There’s a terrible disaster up on Ceres. Their power generator blew up and caused a huge air leak. We would have called sooner but I knew you’d be sleeping. You need to get those batteries and tanks of solid oxygen and nitrogen to the belt as fast as you can make that ship go. The robots should be done loading in ten or fifteen minutes.”

Bill flew his houseboat to the ship and entered, belted into the pilot seat, and detached from the repair facility. Now he only had to wait for the countdown to leave orbit to begin as the ship drifted slowly away from the repair station.

The captain of the ship guarding the facility came on the radio. “You’re on your own for a while, buddy. Commander Ramos says I need to join the chase against an awful lot of pirates, so keep your eyes open.”

“I take off in five minutes anyway,” Bill said. “I’ll be okay.”

“Well, I’ll check on you shortly.”

***

The pirates split up and ran in different directions. The Green-Osbourne defense fleet split up to chase them, and Commander Ramos went after the biggest one. It might be the stolen transport.

“¿Qué en el infierno?” It was outrunning him! That shouldn’t be possible. Maybe it was an old fission ship that had been converted to fusions. When converting them from fission generators to fusions, the engineers had left the fission generator as a backup to the fusions, which often malfunctioned back then. Apparently the pirates had done a bit of hardware hacking and had made it so that they were using all three generators at once. He shook his head, when the company got that one back it was going to really need a lot of work. They might even have to scrap it.

Not only were Green-Osbourne ships heavily armed and armored, they were also stealthy. But not invisible, not as long as the engines were running, since they left a trail of ions behind. Jose grinned at this; common knowledge was that they were completely invisible. Common knowledge is often incorrect, although they were indeed invisible unless you knew what to look for.

It looked like the pirate was circling back towards Mars. He kept following the trail.

***

Will Welton was relieved. His crew had finally finished sealing off the generator building, putting plates and glue on the doorways and sealing the smaller leaks by the dome wall. But the danger was far from over, as the dome itself had practically no air pressure at all now. Rather than going back to the shop, he went home, thankful that his house had a garage that doubled as an airlock. If it didn’t he would have had to stay in the shop until air arrived. All he could do now was wait for the supply ship to come, and hope his air held out long enough. “I need to get some house plants,” he told himself.

When he got home he took off his helmet and gloves, and shut off the environment suit’s power and valves, but didn’t remove the suit; he didn’t know how long his house’s air would last. There was two hours worth of air left in its tank, and if his house ran out of air he'd need it. He wondered if anyone would live.

***

Bill was barely out of orbit before pirates were after him, and a lot of them, too. And wouldn’t you know it, none of the Green-Osbourne defense fleet was anywhere near Mars where they usually were. Probably still chasing the other pirates, he thought, and here there were more. Well, Ralph had warned him, but he wished Jeff could have stuck around.

There was a lot more piracy now, ever since the trouble on Earth had started. The company’s defense fleet was busier than it had ever been.

Pirates could be pretty clever at times, and may have lured the defense fleet away somehow. They had once infiltrated company maintenance years ago and sabotaged Bill’s ship when it was being worked on. If it hadn’t had been for John, who was a company captain at the time, he’d have been dead.

“God damn it,” he swore out loud. “Not now! Pirates are the last thing I need. People are going to die if I don’t get to Ceres!”

But pirates don’t mind people dying. In fact, they quite often caused it. They seemed to enjoy killing.

He could have simply outrun them, but instead dropped an EMP set to discharge when it was right in the middle of the fleet that was after his boat. That should end the problem, and since it would kill everything electronic, the ships’ life control systems would also be dead. If the salvage fleet didn’t show up in time the pirates would be, too.

He hoped so. An awful lot of his friends had been killed at the hands of pirates. The only good pirate was a dead pirate, but he was okay with bad pirates rotting in prison.

His EMP didn’t disable them all. Bad aim on his part? Half a dozen were still accelerating.

He dropped an atomic. He hated destroying valuable space ships that would get a bonus for him if there was a finder’s fee involved, but it seemed the right thing to do at the time.

The lead ship survived. “Damn, they have one of ours,” he said aloud, wondering how pirates had gotten hold of a virtually invincible G-O ship. He quickly called headquarters informing them that pirates had a company transport, although they were certainly aware of it, he thought. This was real trouble. G-O ships were faster, better armed, and sturdier (and usually larger) than other companies’ ships. Now the pirates had EMPs and atomics!

But Bill knew these ships, and knew them better than most company captains, let alone any pirate. Bill was a nerd who loved not only studying how they worked, but how to make them work better. He’d gotten a third gravity on batteries once, and nobody else had ever managed to. Even though he’d tried to explain to the company engineers how he did it, they still didn’t understand.

He’d outrun that sucker.

It took hours, but he did. He was running on both generators and batteries, which he’d set up when he realized that the pirates had one of his company’s boats. He wondered why he wasn’t pulling ahead of the pirate any faster than he was, especially since it was an old ship after him that he should have been able to outrun easily, even without the extra boost from the batteries. He hoped the extra wattage didn’t harm any of the engines; this was a bit of his own nerdy design, the craft already was overdue for maintenance, and he had to run like this far longer than he thought he’d have to.

When he was far enough ahead of the pirate ship that he could no longer detect it, he went at full thrust for another two hours. Then he disconnected the batteries from the engines and set them charging from the generators as he continued on at the ship’s normal top speed. His boss had told him to go as fast as he could make it go, but he worried about the maintenance issues.

He still hadn't had a shower or breakfast. He remedied that immediately.

***

Mayor Watson paced in his office, cursing himself. Why weren’t there more oxygen generators? They had existed since the late twentieth century when they were used to treat emphysema, long before that disease was cured. There were a few in Dome Ceres, of course, but not many. Not nearly enough for an emergency like this.

There weren’t many plants inside buildings, either, except inside the farm buildings. There were a lot of plants outside, but outdoor plants would do little good now; they’d die quickly without air, and in the cold. They would be a help in a home or business, changing the carbon dioxide people exhaled into oxygen and plant material, and he vowed to get plants in every building. Lots of them. Plants inside buildings would save lives!

And why didn’t he have enough air for this sort of emergency stored away? He swore that there would be enough if something like this ever happened again. He cursed himself again for his lack of foresight.

Well, hindsight would have to do. If He lived. He’d gotten a message from John that a ship full of air and batteries was on its way, but would it get here on time?

***

The company defense fleet's commander never lost the ion trail, and eventually came up on the pirate ship, which was drifting through space at a high rate of speed. Either its engines had all burned out, or more likely all three of its generators had malfunctioned; it had been waiting for parts, and the pirates had probably installed old used, sub-par equipment. The other pirate vessels had been traveling along side, apparently trying to get the disabled craft going again. They took off in different directions, maybe five of them; his fleet had taken the rest when he was chasing the pirate Green-Osbourne transport.

He got a message from Bob Jones that he and his crew were safe. It had indeed been a mechanical problem, and he was at one of the repair facilities in orbit around Mars, cursing about the stolen transport. If only... And Ramos was still cursing himself for letting Larry leave before his replacement showed up. He wasn’t going to do that again!

Docking with the crippled purloined transport was easy, and now his commandos were all on duty. He wondered how many pirates would be captured, and how many killed. He gave no thought to G-O casualties, because there never were any. These men and women were very well trained.

He chuckled. When pirates fought with the police on Earth, often the pirates won. But never when they tangled with the G-O security fleet. Earth had better never go to war with Mars!

***

Bill fretted. Engine 129 was showing a small undervoltage in one computer, and a small overvoltage on a different computer. All four computers were supposed to agree. He trudged down the five flights of stairs, worrying and cursing. He was half a day from Ceres, his time, but it would be longer Ceres time because of the time dilation that extreme speed causes. If he lost any more engines... and God forbid that he lose a generator. Everyone on Ceres would die, including Chuck.

Even though two of the four computers disagreeing usually meant a bad electrical connection, he shut number 129 down, as per normal operation. He considered shutting the two next to it down as well, knowing that sometimes this sort of problem spread from engine to engine. One engine wouldn't matter, since he was ahead of schedule, sort of, but three might.

He'd probably broken another speed record and would arrive “early”, if there was such a thing in a situation like this. He'd been doing more than a gravity and a half when the pirate ship was chasing him, which was as high as the indicator would go. The craft’s top speed was supposed to be one point four Gs, and he wondered how much he’d really gotten out of it. Walking up those five flights of stairs in that gravity was a real workout, especially after being on Mars and on low gravity runs.

Unlike most runs, he spent most of his waking time the whole run in the pilot room, the engine room at the bottom of the ship, and traveling between the two. “My legs will look like turkey legs when this run’s over,” he panted as he climbed the stairs.

It was time to turn the ship around and decelerate, and he was glad it wasn't an old boat. The old models almost always had something break when you reversed them for braking. If he lost a generator now, he’d overshoot Ceres.

***

On Ceres it had been two Earthian days since the accident, and things were getting grim. Some people were running out of food, air was getting pretty bad in some buildings, and if the ship ran late a lot of people would die. Maybe everyone.

Will Welton had taken off the suit finally, realizing he couldn’t keep wearing it until air came. He’d put it back on if the air in his house got thick.

Mayor Watson had spent that time mostly pacing in his office, feeling like a caged animal. Most Cererians were probably feeling the same way, he thought.

While he paced, the same thoughts raced through his head, over and over, planning for the aftermath of this mess. Dome Ceres was going to have emergency oxygen, and a lot more inside plants. He envisioned air pipes running into homes from a central emergency air supply that would run parallel to water pipes. He wondered why this hadn't been done before, and wondered what else he could do to make the Cererian Dome safer. All he could do now was hope that ship wasn't late.

***

Jen Carpenter was in the hospital with a broken arm. She had panicked when she had a strange feeling and started running, and was outside before the alarms even sounded. She didn't even know what had spooked her. The first one out of the building, she tripped and fell right when the alarm sounded.

Her arm hurt, but she was glad of her misstep, because hospitals keep lots of oxygen. The folks there would be the last to asphyxiate if that ship was late.

A tear ran down her cheek; she had lost friends in the accident, and probably wouldn’t even get to attend the funerals.

***

Chuck answered his phone. It was his Martian friend Captain Bill Kelly, piloting the rescue ship. He was only a half hour away, planet time! He hadn't expected it to arrive until the next Earth day. Nobody counted Cererian days, since they were so short.

“Thank God!” he said over the phone to Captain Kelly.

Bill laughed in the weirdly fast, high pitch of someone on an approaching ship coming in at high speeds. “Thank pirates. They have one of our ships and I had to do what might have been dangerous to outrun ‘em. I'm pretty sure I broke a speed record. Look, Chuck, suit up and I’ll meet you at the transport dock. Ceres’ gravity is low enough I can land an ion ship on the surface.”

They spoke for another minute or two before hanging up. Bill readied the ship for landing, and Chuck suited up to meet him.

***

Will Welton was worried. Oxygen was getting low and carbon dioxide was getting thick in his house, and he was becoming confused and had a terrible headache. He donned his environment suit, helmet, and gloves, turned on the valves and electronics, and drove to the hospital. Surely they would have enough oxygen.

Confused by the anoxia he had gotten before donning his helmet, he had a hard time finding the hospital and didn’t think of having the vehicle go there. He gave it verbal directions, many of which were wrong, instead of simply saying “take me to the nearest hospital.” His head was pounding, and his mood was swinging like a yo-yo. He finally reached the hospital two hours later, parked in the lot, and collapsed in the emergency room’s airlock.

It was only a minute or two before he was found, as he wasn’t the only one who had started running out of air. Hospital staff were extra busy today!

***

“I sure am glad to see you, mate. Things are getting desperate,” said the British Chuck.

“I hope I got here on time,” Bill replied.

“Barely, but yeah. Once those canisters are finished unloading and opened they’ll melt and boil away quickly in this warmth.” The robots were bringing them in and opening them, and the first ones opened were already appreciably less full. Clouds of vapor were rolling out of the boiling but super-cold liquid in the opened canisters.

Bill looked at the thermometer on his environment suit’s sleeve. Warmth? Oh, well. “So how long will it be until you can get a new generator built?”

“Six months. It would only take two if we could afford speed, but we’re going to need so many batteries our budget is going to be really strained.”

“Why don’t you call John and see if the company will rent this ship to you for a couple of months?”

“I don’t need a ship, I need electricity!”

“What do you think this tub runs on, hydrazine? There are two fusion generators on it, big ones, three stories tall each. We dock ships that have busted generators and charge the broken ship’s backup batteries all the time.

“My boat was going to be out of action for a while anyway for maintenance, and considering what I did to get here alive and on time it’s really going to need it. Maintenance should be easier with gravity, even as low a gravity as Ceres has. We could send the dozen or so people necessary to do it here. Call John. I'll bet he’d do it for a load of rare earths, and you folks have plenty!”

“Come on, Bill, lets get to my office so I can call him, that’s a great idea!”

“Look, Chuck, I’d love to, but I need to supervise hooking the ship’s generators up to your grid so everybody can charge their batteries. I’ll meet you at the Bull’s Head for a beer later if it’s open.”

“It should be. Every restaurant, pub, and shop on the dome will be busy tonight. Cooped up in their homes running out of air they’re going to want to be out, and only a fool would leave his shop closed. I’ll meet you there.”

***

“Yeah, Chuck called, twice.” “I thought his staff would have.”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t exactly talk to him there. It was email, of course, but I can’t see Chuck not handling something like that himself. So how was your trip? What happened after you got to Ceres?”

“Well, there was nothing out of the ordinary on the way there, just routine. You were a captain once, you know how it goes.” He chuckled. “I’m pretty sure I broke a speed record, though.”

John laughed. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Well, anyway, a couple of hours after I got there you could walk around outside without an environment suit, and half the people there opened their windows because the cold, thin air outside was more breathable than the thick, oxygen-thin and carbon dioxide-saturated air inside.

“The police checked all of the buildings to make sure the occupants were all right, and I met Chuck at the pub when we were done working.

“I was on Ceres for a long time, rode back on the Orion ship after it finally got there, unloaded all the batteries, and loaded a shipment of rare earths for Charlie Onehorse’s dome here on Mars. As slow as Orion’s ships are I was on Ceres a week before he even got there, and it took half a day to unload the batteries and load the ore.

“So how have things been down here on Mars?”