Mining the Oort by Frederik Pohl

Author:Frederik Pohl [Pohl, Frederik]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Mars (Planet), General, Mines and Mineral Resources, Fiction
ISBN: 9780345372000
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 1992-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

The trouble with being a guest was that you couldn't leave until your host wanted to go. Dekker was not enjoying himself. Everyone else at the table seemed to be settled there for life, wrangling and arguing in ways that struck him as perilously close to outright affront. It didn't surprise Dekker that the voices were getting more quarrelsome. There had been a lot of alcohol already, and more coming all the time. Although Dekker had figured out that drunkenness was the tolerated Earthie escape from the imposed regime of at least keeping your hostilities to yourself, if you couldn't avoid feeling them, he wondered how much farther some of these people could go before the Peacekeepers came in.

Now that he had dried off, the place was unpleasantly warm, too. He pulled the sweater off and tied it around his waist, looking around the room. It was more crowded then ever, though he could not see Marcus Hagland anywhere. That was just as well, he thought, and thought resentfully again that there was no good reason for him to be here. There was no one he particularly wanted to talk to in the room but, maybe, Ven Kupferfeld, and she was busily head to head with another man again.

Maybe, Dekker thought, there wasn't any good reason for him to be on Earth at all. To help his planet, sure. But if the whole Oort project was as shaky as everybody seemed to think, then it might easily happen that he'd get through the course just in time to find that there were no jobs. Then what about his career?

Then, for that matter, what about Mars?

He didn't like that thought. Lacking anything better to do, he headed for the free lunch again.

There wasn't much left of it. As he was trying to pick out enough scraps to make another sandwich, someone bumped into him.

"Sorry," she said, and as he turned he saw it was the female instructor he had seen talking with Liselotte Durch.

"That's all right," he said, and began to turn back to his sandwich when she put out her hand to touch his arm.

"Wait a minute," she said. "I know you."

"You've probably seen me around. I'm a trainee. My name's Dekker DeWoe."

"I know you're a trainee," she said impatiently. "I don't mean that. I mean you look a little bit like—oh, my God," she said, "you're the Martian kid, aren't you?"

He stared at her, then memory flooded back. "From Sunpoint City, yes," he said. "And you're—you're the one who had the party, just before the first impact," he said to the grown-up Annetta Cauchy.

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