Chapter Seven
Jas had never been to Australia. As the shuttle descended to the spaceport, she realized that she’d seen more of other planets than she’d seen of Earth. Most of her childhood had been spent on Mars. It was only when she’d reached puberty that it had occurred to the orphanage director that if she didn’t go to Earth soon, she would grow too tall and weak to ever go there. A few more years in a government institution in Chicago had passed, then she’d gone directly to security training and as soon as she’d graduated, she left on her first mission aboard a prospector.
At the time, she’d seen no reason not to start work immediately. She had no family nor any particularly close friends to leave behind, but as she looked out of the shuttle window at the bright blue of Botany Bay an
