Chapter 2: Homeworld

This isn’t much of a home but I can’t afford anything else. A chair with a desk that sinks when I pull down the fold up bed.

Many of my class of pilots live in exact copy cubicles as mine, in Bachelor Pilots Quarters at the few spaceports scattered around the globe. Joe and I share this one. In and out. One of us is always out, piloting Holy Cow. There is a finite number of BPQ cubicles and a lengthy wait list to rent one. Joe rents this one and as a benefit of being his employer, I’m allowed to use it when Joe isn’t, roommates in passing.

Nearly every coin Holy Cow earns goes for ship expenses.

After fuel costs, replacement heat-shield tiles, rebuilding telescoping rotor segments, paying a salary for my alter-pilot Joe Boueff, costs of port commissions and required inspections fees, then all the income left goes for the hefty quarterly payments on Holy Cow’s purchase lien.

I eat out of dumpsters.

Not disgusting garbage, pizza crusts and plate scrapings, nothing like that. Discarded space provisions. The asteroid-tugs are gone for many months at a time, sometimes almost a year. When they depart on a new voyage, they dump any remaining old food stuffs and re-provision with all new. I scavenge the old packs. There are no expiration dates. It’s only in an excess of caution they were replaced.

It was while dumpster diving, I met our girlfriend, Sue Lee. Joe’s and mine. Girlfriend. Joe and I share nearly everything except toothbrushes and surfer trunks. The sprayed on skin-suits we wear in space don’t have pockets. Surfer trunks have capacious cargo pockets with velcro flaps to close them. The drawstring waist cord ends are also handy for tying onto things you want tethered on your lap and not drifting around. Like a barf bag or a three ring binder with perforated skin mags clipped inside. We wear surfer trunks on top of and in addition to the skin-suits. It’s practically a spacer’s uniform now days.

While I was in a dumpster organizing my salvaged meals into most and least preferred, because I only have two arms for carrying, Sue Lee vaulted in on top of me. My first response was to protect myself from whatever vicious beast just attacked me. Feral dog perhaps. Intent on keeping clear of it’s jaws, I grabbed it by the fur on the scruff of the neck and held it’s head away at arm’s length. Took me a minute to recognize I had gripped a girl by her greasy ponytail. A kicking, clawing, scratching girl, screeching foul names at me. Might even be cute underneath the grime and tattered rags she wears. She calmed down, became still and quiet at sight of the big fist I threatened her with, cocking my arm.

Not especially greedy, I offer her the food packs I didn’t want. She and I discover we have something in common, right from start. We both prefer the same food packs. I’m generous to a point, short of self sacrifice. First come has first dibs. I was first. She is welcome to what’s left.

We introduce ourselves and she offers to help me carry as many packets as we can both manage to my quarters, to divide up there.

I took her home. She stayed. Sue Lee greets me now when I arrive.

Before I continue further with the story, in response to advice from a well intentioned but ill informed reader, that my space copter requires a difficult suspension of disbelief and violates numerous laws of physics and rocket science, I respond to all who share that view thusly.

Look up ROTON Rocket and Rotary Rocket Company on the net.

The space copter I’m using in my story was constructed with off the shelf readily available components more than twenty years ago.

It successfully flew in atmospheric tests flights, VTOL capable from small fields and the developers, including I believe the famous homebuilt aircraft designer Burt Rutan was involved in early design concepts, were planning to try for the XPrize. The multi-million dollars prize for the first civilian owned, built, and manned spacecraft to orbit the earth and return safely. Space X won. Personally, I was disappointed the space copter wasn’t a continued project. Great potential I believed and it’s potential is accomplished in the era of my story.

Pulling arguments out of your arse why something is unreasonable or impossible, doesn’t cut it, when the truth is you simply failed to research the facts of history.