Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Ordinary Days

There's been no news. Sometimes, hurtling through space has big stretches of time where Just not Much Happens. I look out a window. I wait. I read something and have a snooze. I talk to the cargo. I wonder if I could have done things differently. Such is life.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Sirocco Stream

It's been a good run lately, I've been doing this for a while now and so I've picked up a few tricks from the old timers.
We're flowing with the solar winds for the next three cycles, a lovely extra kick-along, and it has put us into the path of the mild and loose social connections that natural nomads make. The bodegas in the port worlds are just that tiny bit more full with the more colourful and experienced characters. There's a light camaraderie that I had grown out of hoping to find, and here it is, under the current and seeping into my world.

I'm carrying settlers at the moment, their enthusiastic hopefulness and optimism is catching. I find that I am happy for no reason.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Sunshine Skins

We picked up a fresh cargo the other day - mandarins and oranges. I took a crate as part payment and gorged myself on the first day and pulped and froze what I couldn't eat, because I remember the last time I took on board this stuff.

At first I had been delighted to have the fragrant crates in the hold, I love how they seem to store the sun in their skins, but quickly enough I couldn't get them offloaded soon enough. It is easy to forget that ripe means fresh. Which means "consume very soon". That's why jams and pickles used to be so big, because those gorgeous full globes will go off, and once they start it is a race to decay. Skin fungus, fermentation, even in the cold, even leaving the hold to get close to space cold - they'll turn fast.

We're landing in just hours now, and I know that the people here will go crazy for this delivery. There'll be enough good stuff in amongst it all to make it a lucrative run, and I've got enough snap-frozen pulp to keep scurvy away for a long while.