Anton's Odyssey by Marc Andre Page B

issue suits that are self-cleaning, coated in nano particles or something. We don’t have those here.” he said. “Although, sort of the point of the white clothing is to show that you don’t have to do the dirty work anymore. But on this ship, they always run with a bare minimum of crewmembers. My dad says it’s to save money. Even the able starmen have to do some of the nasty jobs sometimes. The suits look good now because we just picked up new ones back at port. Just wait a few months, even with regular laundry service they get all stained and start to turn grey. If a bunch of people die, the crew can get stretched really thin, and the white suits get really nasty from all the extra work duties.”
    “People die out here?” I asked. There was a loud crash. Not interested in our conversation, Cotton attempted to amuse himself by stacking Hammond’s chairs end to end. The top chair had gotten away from him.
    “Your brother always like this?” Hammond asked, mildly annoyed.
    “Naw, he just gets into mischief when he’s bored. You got any comic books?” I asked. “We need something to keep him occupied.”
    “Yeah, good idea, I got some old ones from when I was a kid.” He stood up, and I followed him into his room. Hammond recovered a box from under his bed. “I got some skin mags too,” he said. “Wanna give your brother a skin mag?”
    “We better not,” I said. I wasn’t sure if Cotton had discovered girls yet. The results could be unpredictable.
    Most of Hammond’s comics were in excellent shape without any wrinkles or creases. I asked if he had any damaged ones, and he found about three that didn’t have any collector value. He gave them to Cotton as a gift. Cotton was thrilled. He lay on his stomach in the middle of the floor and lost himself in the gory graphics.
    “So people get killed out here?” I asked.
    “Oh yeah, happens all the time. Dad said because this ship is registered in Liberia and because we never stay in port for more than twenty-eight days, we aren’t subject to a safety inspection by the NSSA.”
    “NSSA?”
    “National Spacecraft Safety Administration. They make sure your cubane is in the right sort of canister and you got your radiation shielding in the right place. Technically we are supposed to follow NSSA regulations, but with no safety inspection at port, there’s no real enforcement. My dad told me about this guy in the engine room a few voyages back who got his jump suit caught on the flywheel of a zero friction kinetic energy reservoir. Ripped off his arm, and he bled to death. It was really nasty! Dad said if they followed NSSA regulations on machine guarding, the accident wouldn’t have happened.”
    “That’s really messed up!” I cried.
    “Yeah, and after that three other guys died in a cubane explosion. With four men down, the engine room was really shorthanded, so they made dad work twenty-twenty-tens.”
    “Twenty-twenty-tens?” I asked. “What’s that?”
    “That’s when they make you work for twenty hours, rest for four fours, work for another twenty hours, rest for another four hours, and then work another ten hour shift.”
    “What happens after the ten hour shift?”
    “You crash hard for fourteen hours. When you wake up, you start over again with another twenty-hour shift. Dad always did all right, never did need much sleep, but this other guy, he couldn’t hack it and started taking fenes. Got all strung out and paranoid. Said he needed fresh air and shot himself out the airlock.”
    “That’s messed up!” I repeated. I had always associated fenes with people who lived in dilapidated shacks and had rotten teeth. I had no idea people used them in space. “How did he get the fenes?” I asked. “Do people sneak them aboard?”
    “I suppose some people might stash fenes in their luggage, but the truth is they got all the ingredients you need to make fenes right here on the ship. Dad said some of the chemicals they keep aren’t even