Farthest Reef by Karl Kofoed

strap.
    “Yeah,” Alex grunted. “So much new gear, I wonder if I can fly ’er?”
    Tsu touched his arm before they entered. “Slept through the orientation tapes, right?”
    Alex smiled sarcastically. “The medication didn’t help, but I got most of it.”
    “This whole thing is buggin’ you, right?”
    He peered at her incredulously. “Why’re you askin’?”
    “Alex,” Connie said, almost in a whisper, “They did you wrong. A year back I told them to go to you directly, bring you in on the planning. They didn’t listen.”
    “I’d have told ’em no.”
    Tsu looked at her foam-clad feet, thinking, then looked up at him. “I don’t think so. I’m thinkin’ you’d give anything to go to explore another star.”
    Alex looked into Diver’s open hatch. The inner chamber looked the same as when he left Jupiter, years before. There, he’d opened sample tubes, sabotaging reef samples to slow the advance of science into the reef. He knew the act had been futile but he’d never regretted it. He’d tried to make his sabotage look like an accident, but the Corpies knew. He guessed that was the reason Earthcorp didn’t trust him enough to ask if he wanted to go. He still hadn’t made up his mind. All he knew for sure at the moment was that he wasn’t going to start discussing it with Connie. “Let’s go,” he said. “Mary’s waiting.”
    6 Except for Connie sitting in Mary’s seat, everything seemed the same as the last time he had operated his ship. The cabin had been cleaned and refitted with newer cabinetry, but Diver still had the same feel as when he flew her last.
    “She’s more powerful. Twice what you handled,” said Tsu, watching Alex swing his ship away from the giant needle in the sky. “You know about the snatcher, but did you know they dropped the balloons? Not necessary. Null-gee is enough, they think. Are you pissed?”
    “The balloons were a backup,” said Alex. “If the gravity failed …”
    “You’d have sunk like a stone without the null-gee. And you know it.”
    Alex fixed his gaze on Ganymede, the solar system’s largest moon. Behind it sat Jupiter and that giant ruddy shadow he knew to be its Great Red Spot. “You may be right,” he admitted. “Actually, considering the more powerful null-gee we had on the second trip in, I concluded that the balloons probably just got in the way. We almost got stuck down there a few times because of them.” He pushed the stick forward and felt Diver spring to life. The acceleration snapped his head back against the seat. “Whooooa! I see what you mean.”
    “Pulse plasma-ramjet accelerators,” said Tsu, yawning. “Twice the thrust you had before. Paid for by Uncle Earthcorp. Have you any idea what those cost to build?” She cast a dark eye on Alex. “You have nothing to complain about.”
    Before the approach to Gannytown, Alex tested the systems, old and new; except, of course, the snatcher. He was dubious about that particular addition. When Tsu insisted he test it, he suggested Connie step outside and he’d suck her in to see if it worked. She laughed, but Alex didn’t. He’d reviewed the data on the snatcher almost as soon as he had the chance. It was, as Stubbs had said, like something used to nab deep sea biota on earth, a large scale hose and containment system designed to ingest delicate organisms without a scratch.
    Alex tried to imagine the circumstances that might allow them to snatch a clicker man. On the first two trips into the reef, clicker men had rarely gotten close to Diver . If having Diver in their midst wasn’t alarming enough, the clicks clearly didn’t like the null-gee field. Occasionally small groups of clicker men had gotten close enough to grab, perhaps, but they were always under the watchful eye of other clicker men watching at a distance. Even if they did snatch a clicker man and beat it out of there, would the snatcher harm them? Could they even transport them safely to Goddard , let alone