When the five landed on New Galveston, the sky was its usual shade of murky teal. Precious little sunlight reached the surface through the clouds. Small and swampy, the planet sat alone in a small binary system just a half day’s flight from Celhesru. It experienced a thirty-hour rotational period with fifteen hours each of night and day. The axial tilt caused by its twin suns resulted in wild seasonal shifts, unpredictable even for seasoned planetologists. Even more difficult was the calculation of what a year actually was on this world, and so the inhabitants, primarily Humans there on a temporary basis, observed the standard Earth year.

  The ship touched down on a landing pad at the edge of a bayou which seemed to have no end. Strange looking trees grew out of the water. Between their gnarled trunks, hidden by the persistent fog, wailed the creatures who made the wetland their home. The thick vapor also obscured the tops of the only other manmade structures around. A flat, gray walkway led them from their ship, through the mist, to the large industrial complex in the distance. The refinery was comprised of innumerable towers and adjoining structures with blinking lights scattered throughout. On the other side of it, one could almost make out the shapes of larger vessels entering and leaving the atmosphere via the freight landing zones. These ships brought in raw Vercoden ore and left with finished rods of varying sizes, ready for placement in spacecraft reactors large and small.

  Despite the complex’s foreboding scale, Nash was unimpressed. The operation ahead of them was Earthling-run, and nowhere near as grand as the more established Iolite refineries which had the privilege of centuries. But to Greg, this seemed about right. He knew this establishment wasn’t affiliated with the same company where his father held sway, but he had certainly seen a place or two like this in his youth (Old Galveston, mainly). In fact, the one at which they found themselves today had been a family-operated project for three generations now.

  According to Greg’s informal briefing on the flight over, the grandfather Albemarle found this planet with a small cache of Vercoden below the surface almost eighty years ago out of sheer luck. It was nothing less than a miracle the Iolites hadn’t gotten to it ages before. Perhaps they once considered it too small to bother with. The old man went on to build his own refinery, an independent venture out of the way of the big players. After a while, the planet’s limited supply ran out, but by then other small-time Vercoden mining operations were bringing their ore to the Albemarle family for processing, and so the business continued. Today the place was run by one of the grandsons, a man named Mike, Greg said.

  “I thought we told you time and again, we don’t need you here.” A tall man of about forty, assailed the group of five in the stately, art-deco entrance hall. The stone floor and walls were hewn from some native marble as green as the surrounding swamp. “Anybody who shows up purple is getting turned right around at the front door. You can keep your money. Understand? Not. For. Sale!” He barked, referring to the only one among them who was purple. Nash was taken aback by the sudden onslaught and began to fear she was out of her depth. She remained calm and continued to say nothing, as much from a lack of diplomacy training as shock. Mike continued his rant. “The Gild can send a million goons for all I care, and as for the rest of you – wait a minute, is that Ken Williams’ boy I see back there? Glen? George?” He focused his eyes, struggling to summon the one Human’s name.

  “It’s Greg, sir!” He replied, closing the gap to look his fellow man square in the eye and shake his hand. “You know I haven’t seen you since that convention in Dallas back in ’36, but I got to say, you seem like you’re doing fantastic out here? The wife liking it okay?”

  “Oh, she’s doing just fine. She’ll poke her head out when the sun is shining. Could be five minutes or five months for all we know in this damned place,” Mike continued; all hostility paused for the moment.

  “What’s that they say about weather? Blink and it’ll…” Greg said, beaming from ear to ear in his affable way.

  “Change… but seriously,” Mike said, still only addressing Greg. “How’s it you find yourself mixed up with these people? Does your old man know about this?” He gestured dismissively to the others. Greg did well to hide his annoyance at the collapse of what little social progress he thought he’d made.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “If you can believe it, I owe her my life.” Greg said, pointing at Nash. “She was the one who flew down to rescue me from the internship from hell.” It was a lot more than an internship, but Greg wasn’t sure if Mike was aware of how radically their industry might soon change.

  “I caught wind of that one. A friend of mine was on that little station. Shame about it all… You still talk to LB and the rest of them? They’re up to big things, I hear.” Maybe he knew more than most.

  “You know, he told me I was crazy, and maybe the others thought so too. But just after I left they saw the writing on the wall and evacuated before the total collapse…” Greg started, silently wishing for the opportunity to talk to Mike alone without all this pretense. “…so, praise be to He that my ex-girlfriend still walks the Earth somewhere!” The two men shared a sensible chuckle.

  “Yes, Miss Rygate; smarter than you by a good deal if I recall…” Mike ribbed before resuming his previous line of questioning, though less amiably than before. “… But really, what are you doing here?” He clearly had no interest in discussing more lucrative matters, so he cut through Greg’s smokescreen and peered at the supporting cast. He was content to glaze over Sohrab as he was very clearly some unimportant kind of foreign. Kory and Zol on the other hand, were throwing him for a loop. Their coloration seemed Human enough, but the eyes were much too dark to be plain old brown.

  “Listen, I know this doesn’t look… ideal.” Greg chose his words carefully. Nash gave him a cautious look to remind him he wasn’t to be making any bold declarations. He half acknowledged her, but plotted his own course, regardless. “I can assure you that this is not a hostile takeover. If anything, we just want to talk about how things can get better for all of us… together!” His careless phrasing made Nash cringe. As Greg continued blathering away about matters he knew little about, she felt the air shift behind her. Sohrab placed a hand on her shoulder and whispered almost imperceptibly in her ear.

  “Follow me, but don’t make it look urgent,” he said. She nodded calmly and stepped with him behind Kory and Zol, who remained stone-faced, looking a little more like ‘the muscle’ than she would have liked. She reminded herself they would need some social coaching for future encounters. When she and Sohrab were out of earshot, he leaned in close and told her: “This is going a lot more poorly than it looks. If you and your associates ever hope to gain some leverage around here, we need to leave now before that idiot up there digs an even bigger hole.”

  “How can you know?” Nash replied, fighting the urge to glare accusingly at Greg and Mike upon Sohrab’s suggestion.

  “Don’t look at them!” He hissed.

  “I’m not!” She snapped, still at the level of a whisper. “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Get the shovel out of his hand and get us out of here,” he chipped. “Don’t forget, you’re in charge.”

  “You better make sense of all this sooner rather than later,” she seethed, unhappy with his assessment and even unhappier that she believed him. Nash took a deep breath, put on the cheeriest face she could muster, and moseyed on over to end the encounter as gently as possible. As she passed by, Kory noticed the tone had shifted but felt powerless to do anything about it. What had been only awkward at first now took on a heightened urgency. She turned to Zol, wondering if he had sensed it too. Something in his gaze told her he knew as little as she did, but not to worry either way. What little reassurance his presence offered wasn’t enough to satisfy her uncertainty.

  “Gentlemen, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems we’ll have to cut our visit short for today,” Nash started, shaking both Mike’s hand and Greg’s too for some reason. She smiled almost too wide, as the syrupy sweet customer-service voice spilled forth from her lips with a momentum not her own. It surprised and repulsed her to hear it. This front-of-house kind of interaction didn’t come naturally to her like it did Greg. She and her uncle were more of the ‘boys-in-the-back-room’ types in the business. But she managed all the same.

  In no time at all, the failed expedition came to a close. Mike Albemarle’s initial hostility abated and the five returned to their craft as quickly as they arrived. Though Greg was understandably befuddled. He thought it had been going pretty well. On the quick trek down the walkway, he accosted Nash with a flurry of questions which she frustrated further by brushing them off, insisting he drop the subject until they were soundly skyward. Kory and Zol followed behind with Sohrab bringing up the rear, looking periodically over his shoulder as he urged them to “hurry, but don’t sprint, damn you. It’s called subtlety.”

  The wind howled relentlessly as the ship climbed through the misty atmosphere. Better that than silence for the tense twenty-minute ascent. Only once the jump was complete could all hell break loose.