Sparks in Cosmic Dust by Robert Appleton Page B

other interested female parties that he was hers. “I think we come to trust some of those we work with. Greed might keep everyone working, but you can kiss my ass, old timer, if you think I’d ever give up my friendship—” she dealt Clay a slow-motion fist to the chin, “—for a few sacks of rocks.”
    “Trust. I vote trust,” Solomon joked. “Boo sucks to greed. Long live solidarity. Sorry, Grace.”
    “So be it, chicks. Let’s hope you can teach me a thing or two. Now—” after checking all around them for eavesdroppers—twice, three times—the old woman plunged a bony hand inside her jumper and retrieved a plastic medicine bottle hanging on a necklace against her bosom, “—I trust you can all keep a secret.”
    The others affirmed with wide eyes reflecting the glow of drum-fire embers, while Varinia offered an enthusiastic nod. She had to hand it to the old woman. For all her cynicism, she commanded a measure of wonder, not least by her disarming charisma, the product of curdled charm and a prickly-but-fun sense of absurdity. She was the unsavory aunt whom everyone else avoided but you secretly loved hanging out with.
    “In this bottle is a microdot containing two sets of coordinates.” She closed her fist around it. “The first is the location of Zopyrus, the biggest of four moons around a planet several light-years from here. It’s too far for the regular snatch-and-grab ops. It has been surveyed by satellite—I checked—but the mineral results came back negative. Here’s the good part. As any good prospector knows, you can’t scout properly from the air—surface terrain can be a sly old devil.” She tapped the bottle, lowered her voice to a whisper. “The second map shows the location of a rather special pyrofluvium mine on Zopyrus. Its mountain range consists of several layers, the topmost being corborilium, which plays havoc with standard aerial sensors. So no one else knows about this. It was given to me a while back by a very sick man, a grid-licker just like us, so you can guess his prospecting tale didn’t have a Disney ending.”
    “What’s so special about a pyrofluvium mine?” Lyssa asked. “That stuff’s ten-a-clip in any decent hospital.”
    “You’re thinking of pyrofluvial , the sedative solution that utilizes impure forms of the mineral. I’m talking the absolute purest element—pyrofluvium—tons of it in one place. There’s—”
    “They’re the same thing,” the vamp interrupted.
    “No, no they’re not. I was the resident doctor at Pont de Rêves for eight years. Graduated cum laude at the ISPA Academy. What science qualifications have you got?”
    “A thorough and versatile knowledge of blood-letting.” With a glint in her eye, Lyssa slashed her index finger across her throat. “Does that count?”
    “Yes. Admirable. Don’t ever tell me my business again.”
    Solomon piped up, “You were the Selene doctor? At the actual Selene Pageant?”
    Grace gave a resigned nod. “Uh-huh. Eight years of mollycoddling prima Godivas. Trust me, the job’s not as glamorous as it sounds. I was fired when one of the girls accused me of slander. Her billionaire daddy even filed suit, insisted his daughter had always been prone to indigestion and wasn’t sick.”
    “What was really wrong with her?” Lyssa asked.
    “She was pregnant with daddy’s triplets.”
    The others laughed blackly, but Varinia cringed. She’d felt that Grace had recognized her right away when they’d first spoken. Had she? Could she? Varinia certainly didn’t remember her at Pont de Rêves, and she’d been through all the official pageant checkups and screenings. Maybe the old woman had already been fired by that time. But even so…it was too close for comfort.
    “Pyrofluvium is the stuff they use in energy research, isn’t it?” Clay asked. “Cutting-edge propulsion?”
    Grace clicked her fingers during an emphatic hand swipe. “That’s the juice. You’ve just moved to the top of