Dammit, don't they teach these kids they are sending us anything?"I could tell he was talking to let off steam so I didn't answer. I heard a brushing ...oise outside the door and motioned for him to speak. When he started back up again I carefully went to the office door with the Captain talking and giving me a strange look. I waited a few seconds and quickly opened the door. The clerk from out front almost fell inside, off balance from his listening position at the door. Without thinking I. " All right. Good luck!" Thanks."Steven relayed what he had learned to Becca when she brought him coffee.She showed no emotion."Thanks, Uncle Steven," she said. "I suppose I ought to have guessed at something like that but not when she was killed. I thought as a kid that she was too young to die and that she'd sugared off with some bloke and didn't want me along. That's what's made me so bitter: that she'd have left me to all those bloody do-gooders who just wanted to get into my knickers."She. There hadn’t been a weapons system designed into the plans of New Eden she had studied. “That’s the Asteroid Defense Project,” her father informed her. “We installed six laser cannons around Southern’s perimeter last winter. Six more are being built at Deimos Station. When we return in eight years or so, they will be installed around the perimeter of Northern. “There’s enough fuel to make three more trips to the inner worlds,” he continued, smiling down at her. “We’re planning only one more. “I still can’t believe I let Sandra talk me into this,” Emily said to herself for perhaps the tenth time.The truth was, the forty-six-year-old really hadn’t needed much convincing, even if she didn’t want to admit that to herself. Her thoughts again drifted to the events of a day past when she and Sandra were finishing up the workday at the Food King Market. It wasn’t the greatest of jobs, Emily knew, but after the death of her husband she had to do something to supplement the provisions he’d.