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twin almost to the river by day's end. Unless his wounds had slowed him. Unless he had become septic and died alone in the woods, far from help. Ramon shuddered at the thought, but then dismissed it. That was Ramon Espejo out there. A tough-ass bastard like that wasn't going to die easy!

Jesus God, he better not!

Chapter Ten

Ramon had never intended to leave Earth. It was one of those accidents of circumstance, and little more. At fifteen, he'd taken work in the open pit mines of southern Mexico. One of the operators had fallen sick - too much dust in his lungs - and Ramon had taken his place. The overseer had shown him how to drive the old lift, warned him that the three-story-tall earthmovers weren't going to slow down if he got in the way, and his career had begun. Sixteen-hour days in sun hot enough to melt and crack the plastic seals around his pitted windshield, moving and smoothing slag and gravel according to the shouted orders. The rags he tied over his mouth began the morning in any number of bright colors - blue and red and orange - and ended the gray of dirt. After one of the older workers had kicked the shit out of him, he joined a work gang under Palenki - old Palenki who was queer and crazed, mean as a rat and ruthless as the cancer that finally killed him. But he made sure no one fucked with his team. He was the one who'd shown Ramon how to stick a woman's sanitary pad in his hard hat to keep the sweat out of his eyes.

Those had been terrible days, working the mines. He'd slept on a company cot in a wood shack hardly better than the squatters' holes he'd grown up in. The food had tasted of grit. It was a grinding, endless exhaustion, and the money he made was hardly enough to get drunk with on Saturday night. And still, it was work.

Palenki had been his ticket. The old bastard had made his crew learn. In the nights, when no one wanted anything more than to sleep and try to forget the day, Palenki made them all watch tutorials on mining technology and industrial geology. Ramon had hated it, but he didn't want to get cut from the work gang. So, half against his will, he'd learned. And though he would never have said it, he found himself enjoying it. Stone made sense to him, the way that land formed, folding ancient histories into itself until someone like him came along and cracked it open. The half-hour tutorial sessions were the best part of his day, almost worth losing the sleep for.

And perhaps Palenki had seen it in him. Because the time came when the Silver Enye ships arrived at the platforms above Mexico City. Huge beyond imagining, they hung in the sky like hawks riding an updraft. There was a contract. A colony planet. The first wave had left thirty years before, and now the Enye wanted to sling a ship after them to bring the industrial infrastructure that the planet would need. The first colonists wouldn't reach the planet for another several centuries, according to the clocks sitting on Earth, but with the effects of relativity and the stuttering reality of the Enye drive engines, Ramon could be there in little more than a year of ship's time. Anyone who took a contract to go out into the black carrying the questionable fruits of human industry would by definition outlive everyone who stayed behind. That alone seemed enough to convince Palenki. He accepted a contract and signed his whole work gang up with him.

Ramon remembered taking the orbital shuttle up to the platform, gliding twice around Earth and ending practically right above where he'd started. He was sixteen, and leaving his world behind. The only regret he'd felt at the prospect was when he'd looked down from the Enye ship. The blue of the ocean, the white of the clouds, the industrialized land masses glittering in the crescent nighttime like a permanent fire; Earth was prettier when you were away from it. If you backed up far enough, it was even beautiful.

Palenki had died on the trip. The tumor had been pressing on his heart for months. Ramon and the others of the work gang had scrambled to reorganize themselves, fearing that the Enye wouldn't honor the contract without Palenki, and they were right. The