Credit: Jamie Tufrey

The Regional Authority of Mars (RAM), with the full backing of both the U.N. and the Lunar Republic, had declared the bugs off limits. They couldn't risk a careless act turning the arrival into a disaster.

Teams of researchers followed some of the bugs around. They snapped pictures and made guesses, but all from a distance. Interfering with the visitors was the only capital offence in the RAM legal code. Even joking about it could get a pilot's ticket pulled and the ship impounded.

"No, it's not a bug," Asa said. "I'm off a couple of points on the orbit match. We need to burn some juice on a correction. I told you I thought the grapple let go too early on that last swing."

Holden sighed. "A couple of points? You use 'damn' for a couple of points? That's a 'shoot,' or a 'rats,' at most. You say 'damn' and I get a flipping heart attack!"

"Sorry." Asa shut the drive down and they slammed forward against their restraints. "I think you're wound a little tight, personally."

Holden felt the Aces roll and twist under Asa's guidance. "You don't have my bughh–." The main drive kicked in again. "My bills. You know, a little warning might be nice."

"Oopsy." He grinned at Holden. "Come on. You got a two-bedroom spread on the half-gee ring with a Mars view. Of course you got bills. Me? I got a six-foot sleeper pod up near the hub. No worries."

"I am not raising my daughter in a coffin!" In truth, Holden wasn't sure that six-year-old Jasmine Burke could be contained in such a small space. She was too bright, too energetic, too full of life.

"I'm just saying. You know, a small place up on quarter-gee. Inside corridor. Plenty of room for the three of you. It'd save a lot."

"Why not the welfare dome down on Mars? Huh? That's cheap."

"Nah. You'd spend all your money lifting back to orbit for the mining runs. Drive going off." Holden braced himself for the jolt and Asa shut down the drive. If it came to that, lifting back to orbit wouldn't matter. Holden was three months behind on his payments on the Aces, and Sheila's salary barely stayed ahead of food and air rights for the three of them. He had an inbox full of bills and he was running out of ways to juggle them.

"You don't get it, do you? Asa, if this trip doesn't pay out, I'm done. No more gambles. No more trips. Nothing."

Asa busied himself with the controls. There was nothing in his expression. He didn't smile. He barely blinked. With Asa, that was usually a bad sign.

"Asa, look. It's not personal."

Asa twitched the attitude thrusters a few times. His face was still blank. They'd been partners a long time and friends even longer. Maybe it was hitting him harder than Holden thought.

"Asa?"

A smile grew on Asa's face, then burst into his usual grin. He slapped the controls and all the screens lit up with the view from the forward cameras. "So maybe you should go hook this pebble up and start cashing us in."

They were hanging, nose in, over the asteroid's surface. More than a kilometre long and nearly as wide, the slow-rolling rock had a pockmarked surface of dull, metallic grey. "Beautiful!" Holden tapped up the mineralogy controls and started scanning. He fired the magnetic grapple. It reported a solid grip, and Holden winched them in while Asa levelled the ship and kept up with the asteroid's roll.

"Didn't I tell you?" Asa held up his hands in victory when they were clamped to the surface. "Magnetometer. Spectrometer. Everything looks good."

"You called it, Ace."

"And we have it all to ourselves. Nobody else is stupid enough to hunt this far out."

Holden smiled. "That's us. The dumbest guys in the business." He snapped his harness open and pushed off. Floating above his seat, he stretched the kinks out of his muscles. After the long burn, the return to freefall felt good.

"No more trips." Asa pulled himself over the back of his seat and sailed toward the crew cabin. "You keep talking like that and you'll be holed up with the Scorpion Cult in no time."

"It's got nothing to do with the bugmakers." Holden followed him through the hatch. "Anyway, piling up guns and preaching about an alien Armageddon really isn't my style."