Finder’s Fee

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All across Human Occupied Space planets continued to randomly lose congruency with nullspace, thereby isolating billions of human beings forever, but why should I care?

I was in the company of a beautiful woman, and the two of us were soaring on warm thermals high above the New Sonoran desert on the back of the biggest, gaudiest butterfly in the known Universe. The problems of interplanetary navigation should have been the farthest thing from my mind.

But I did care about the lost worlds, intensely.

After all, my life depended on it.

Only a few days before, the incomprehensible workings—or misworkings—of the currents of nullspace had unexpectedly washed me ashore here on New Sonora, the only habitable planet in the Icarus System, ninety-seven light-years from my intended destination.

And that was only the starter.

The logistics of interstellar commerce are stark. Either you voyage from star to star via nullspace or you don’t go at all. Yes, you can try building yourself a craft capable of attaining a few percent of the speed of light, then spend eighty or ninety years guiding it to the next star system, hoping that something doesn’t break down before you die of old age.

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